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C.CRANE, 172 Main Street, Fortuna, CA (2026)

05/26/2026

Freedom of Speech Lives on the Radio Dial

This Memorial Day, we want to remind everyone that the simple act of tuning in, or tuning out, represents something hard-won and worth protecting.

Gene Burns was a fierce defender of this freedom. If you know the name, you probably already feel something. If you don't, spend a few minutes with some of his archived broadcasts on YouTube, and you'll understand quickly why he's considered one of the great voices in radio history.

Gene believed deeply, vocally, and without apology that talk radio was one of the most important arenas for exercising our First Amendment rights. He made that case memorably when accepting a Freedom of Speech award at Talkers Magazine. No recording survives that we've been able to find, but the people who were in the room haven't forgotten it.

Michael Harrison, founder of Talkers Magazine and host of Up Close and Far Out, has made the same case for decades. In an interview with KNPR, he put it plainly:

"I think talk radio is a very vital expression of the First Amendment. And I think that the First Amendment, freedom of speech, is not a tidy affair. You cannot have free speech and have it be nice or the way you like it or only the truth or only things that are politically correct. Free speech is the foundation upon which America is built."

The dial goes left. The dial goes right. It carries voices you agree with and voices that make you switch stations. That's not a flaw in the system; that's the system working exactly as intended.

What strikes us, going back through old Gene Burns clips, is how current everything feels. The arguments, the tensions, the questions about what free expression means in a complicated country. None of it has gone away. If anything, it's been amplified.

Radio has always been the place where that plays out in real time, unfiltered, between real people.

If you spend any part of your day or night listening to news, to talk, to music, to something you agreed with or something you didn't, it might be worth a moment to consider where that freedom came from.

May we never forget that freedom isn't free.

05/21/2026

There's a kind of trust that only gets built over time. Not from a warranty card or a five-star rating — from years of a thing just showing up for you, morning after morning, without being asked twice.

We think about that a lot. The people who've had a C. Crane radio for a decade and never had a reason to think about it — because it simply worked. The families who had one going in the kitchen every morning like clockwork. The person who reached for it during a storm when everything else had gone dark and quiet.

"In January of 2009, an ice storm knocked out our power for six days. Six days. My C. Crane radio was the thing that kept us calm — kept us knowing what was happening in the world, kept us feeling like we weren't completely cut off from everything. I've bought four new phones since then. The radio is still on my kitchen counter. Still on the same station. It has never, not once, given me a reason to doubt it."
— Margaret T., C. Crane customer since 2009

That's what we're here for. Not the flashiest product on the shelf — just the one that's still there when it matters. The one that earns a permanent spot on the counter.

Forty years of doing exactly that. We don't plan on stopping. 📻

05/15/2026

If You Know, You Know — A Field Guide to Ham Radio Lingo

Ham radio operators have their own secret language. Numbers that mean words. Letters that mean whole sentences. A code that's been alive since the 1800s. Sound familiar? Millennials say they invented that kind of shorthand. Gen Z says they perfected it. Gen X has been there the whole time and honestly doesn't care who gets the credit. LOL. BRB. IYKYK.

Welcome to ham lingo. If you know, you know.

Let's start with the most legendary one:

73 means "best regards."

But the backstory is better than that. Back in 1857, 73 literally meant "My love to you." It softened over the decades... by 1908 it had become "best regards." But the warmth never quite left it. Every time a ham signs off with 73, they're carrying 160 years of friendly intention.

More from the codebook:

📡 CQ — "Calling any station" — A general shout into the ether: is anyone out there? The term comes from the French sécurité... pay attention. Ships were using it before it became the universal radio call. Some things are just too good to retire.

📡 CQ DX — Take that general call and add "DX" — telegraphic shorthand for "distance" — and you're no longer shouting into the ether. You're specifically reaching for someone far away. Usually foreign. It's the difference between "is anyone out there?" and "is anyone out there... far out there?"

📬 QSL — "I confirm receipt of your transmission" — Hams even mail each other physical QSL cards as confirmation. A tradition that's survived the entire digital age.

📍 QTH — "My location is..." — The original location share. No pin, no blue dot, no app. Just your call sign, your frequency, and where you are in the world.

🐌 QRS — "Please send more slowly" — the original "wait, what?"

💬 QSO — A conversation between two operators. Two people, a frequency, and something worth saying. Sometimes across town. Sometimes across an ocean. The format turned out to be so compelling that someone built a whole podcast around it. QSO Today has been running for over 530 episodes... weekly conversations with ham radio operators about their journey, their expertise, and how radio has shaped their lives. Turns out the QSO was always a good format. Just needed an audience and headphones.

🏠 The Shack — where a ham keeps their radio equipment. Every shack is different. Some are spare bedrooms with a single radio, some look like mission control. All of them have a story.

🎓 Elmer — an experienced ham who mentors a newcomer. Ham radio has had "Elmers" long before anyone called it mentorship.

📻 Rig — the radio itself. "Nice rig" is a real compliment in this world.

🔇 Silent Key — the deeply respectful term for a ham operator who has passed away. In old telegraph code, the number 30 meant "the end." SK carries that same quiet weight. It's how the community honors one of their own.

The Q Signals alone are a whole language.

They started as Morse code shortcuts... why tap out a full sentence when three letters say it all? Hams still use them today in voice conversations. It's not unlike texting TY instead of thank you. Shorthand that started as efficiency and became just how you talk when you're part of the culture.

And then there's the phonetic alphabet. Another layer of the code.
When you give your call sign on the air, you don't just say the letters. You say:

Kilo. Alpha. Six. Lima. Mike. November.

Clear, unambiguous, no matter how bad the static. It's elegant engineering wrapped in language.

Here's what's fascinating: every generation invents its own shorthand for connection. Telegraphers in 1857. Hams on HF bands. Kids texting. The medium changes. The human instinct... to communicate efficiently, to belong to something, to have a language that's yours... that part never changes.

Humans have been inventing coded languages for centuries. Some to protect secrets, some to move information faster than the enemy (or the bureaucracy) could follow. Ham radio operators inherited that tradition, even if their codes were born more from necessity than secrecy. But the effect is the same: if you know, you know.

73 to all. 🖐️

Curious what all the letters and numbers mean? The full ARRL ham radio glossary is a rabbit hole worth falling into: arrl.org/ham-radio-glossary

Sources and further reading: ARRL Ham Radio Glossary (arrl.org/ham-radio-glossary) and QSO Today Podcast (qsotoday.com)

05/11/2026

I wanted to take a minute to recognize all of the amateur radio operators out there and say thank you. One thing that's stood out to me about almost all of the amateur (ham) radio operators I've met is their willingness and interest in being of service. They truly are a national resource. What surprises many people is that this isn't a government agency or a well-funded organization — it's a volunteer network of individual licensed operators.

These are the folks who step up and are prepared to help in any emergency and, after an emergency, coordinate disaster recovery. Some operators are trained SKYWARN storm spotters, reporting real-time severe weather observations directly to the National Weather Service. Others serve through ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service), providing critical communications when normal infrastructure fails during disasters. Search and Rescue (SAR) is another common role, as is participation in CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). Ham operators can also be found at hospitals, shelters, and command centers during major events. Many volunteer at public and charity events such as marathons, parades, and festivals where cell service isn't available or is unreliable.

Hamvention has been taking place since 1952 https://hamvention.org/about/history/ and remains one of the largest amateur radio gatherings in the world, drawing over 35,000 attendees from across the globe. Hundreds of vendors, a massive outdoor flea market, and technical seminars make it worth the trip whether you're a seasoned operator or just getting started. People come to buy, sell, and trade gear, attend forums, connect with manufacturers, and meet the operators they've only ever known by callsign. If Dayton isn't practical, most regions host their own smaller hamfests, and your local amateur radio club is a great starting point for finding one near you. Search the ARRL club finder at https://www.arrl.org/clubs to get connected. If the thought of learning Morse code kept you from pursuing a license in the past, it's worth knowing the FCC removed that requirement back in 2007 — making now a great time to get started.

73 to you!

— Jessica Crotty, CEO, C. Crane

05/10/2026

Mothers are often the keepers of the memories, the glue that keeps family and friends connected.

We believe radio also helps keep people connected in ways that are personal. Hearing a song play on the radio can immediately transport you back to a particular moment, smell, place in your history, just like tasting that favorite cookie your mom or grandma made, or that family recipe you continue to try to perfect.

On this Mother's Day, we want to honor all the moms past and present. May radio, in whatever form it takes, continue to be the soundtrack to your life.

05/02/2026

We've heard from a lot of people this week about the CC Vector System. The most common question: which one do I need?

Here's the short version.

If you're trying to cover a garage, a back room, or a garden area from your existing home router, roughly 100 to 300 feet, the CC Vector Home is the right fit. It's the straightforward fix for in-property gaps.

If you travel by RV or spend time at campgrounds and marinas where the park's Wi-Fi signal barely makes it to your site, the CC Vector RV was designed for that situation. It pulls in a distant signal and rebroadcasts it where you need it, out to around 400 feet.

If you're on rural property and need to reach a barn, a shop, or an outbuilding across an open field, sometimes up to a half mile away, the CC Vector Extended Long Range handles those distances.

All three are on sale. Not sure which fits your situation? Call our team at 1-800-522-8863 or visit ccrane.com/booster/ and we'll help you sort it out.

What are you trying to connect?

04/27/2026

Some things have earned their place in a household without making a lot of noise about it.

A good radio is one of them.

It doesn't ask for your password. It doesn't update overnight or require a subscription to unlock the features you actually use. You turn it on, and it works, pulling signal from the air the same way it did forty years ago, the same way it will forty years from now.

Some call it old school. We call it dependable. Not everything needs to be reinvented, and the people who grew up with a radio in every room already know that.

C. Crane has been making high-performance radios for over 40 years. We've spent that time improving reception, refining components, and pushing what a radio can do without adding complexity you don't need. Everything we build is designed to do one thing extremely well: bring back more of what radio used to be. And if you're not hearing the difference, send it back — 60-day guarantee, no questions asked.

04/21/2026

Long-haul truckers used to be some of the most loyal AM radio listeners in the country.

Not out of habit, out of necessity. Before cell phones, before satellite radio, before anything streamed through anything, the cab of an 18-wheeler after midnight was one of the most isolated places you could be on American roads. The radio was the only voice in it.

Clear-channel stations and many of the hosts understood their audience. Programs that ran from midnight to four in the morning were made for people who were awake when they weren't supposed to be: shift workers, insomniacs, drivers, the restless. The hosts knew it. The callers knew it. There was a frankness to late-night radio that daytime programming never quite managed.

Some of those stations still run those hours. The audience may be a little different now. But the signal still stretches farther after dark.

04/14/2026

The Signal Doesn’t Always Follow You

The trip is the easy part.

You get there, park, settle in… and then realize the signal didn’t make the trip with you.

For RV travelers and anyone living just outside strong coverage, it’s a familiar problem. Metal walls and roofs interfere. Distance stretches the signal thin. The places you actually want WiFi don’t quite get it.

The CC Vector System is designed to fix that. It lets you position a powerful antenna where the signal works best, then brings it back to where you are. Compatible with Starlink and standard routers.

It’s on sale this week at ccrane.com.

Where would better signal make the biggest difference for you?

04/10/2026

It's National Siblings Day, and nothing recalls sibling memories more than a road trip. Fighting over who sat where, driving the parents crazy with who was touching whom, and trying to play the license plate or alphabet game to pass the time.

Before interstates connected the country, the radio did. And before you were old enough to drive, someone else was behind the wheel, holding the dial.

Long drives had their own economy. Who controlled the radio, how long before someone complained, what happened when the signal faded and you had to find something new. You didn't always agree. But you were all listening.

There was a kind of geography to those drives that no map could quite capture. The stations changed. So did wherever you were headed.

Tell us all the details about your favorite road trip. Bonus points if you remember what was playing on the radio. Double bonus points if you have an image to share!

C.CRANE

05/26/2026

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Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm