Do many people do this?? Run ham gear on cb. Why would ham guys want to run on 27 mhz?
Yes many people do this and it is nothing new at all. There are of course at least some hams that are on CB with ham gear but many with ham gear are not hams. Just CBers WITH ham gear.
A little history about it in a nutshell...
Before CB was started in '58 or '59 ( I forget which it was) 11 meters was a ham band that got little use and was a band shared with a bunch of things like medical equipment such as diathermy that when used would wipe out the band if you were nearby a hospital. In 1969 I lived about a mile from one and diathermy would wipe out all 23 channels when being used. It was broadband and would float up and down essentially covering all the channels.
As a result 11 meters got little use by hams back in the 50's so they took it to use for CB radio.
There was a lot of ham gear that had 11 meters on it back then such as Johnson Viking and Heathkit DX100 as well as others and the receivers of the time as well. It took almost no time at all for some people to realize the advantages of using ham gear so many did who were more technical minded than the average CB user was.
Many years later say around 1970 use of ham gear took off like a rocket with the Yaesu FT-101 series and those radios having 11 meters on the bandswitch just needing a cut wire to enable it for transmitting.
Some realized that with other ham rigs they could ad or swap out a crystal and the rig would cover CB instead of a portion of the 10 meter ham band.
Some companies like Swan (a ham gear maker) saw the money to be had and manufactured 10/11 meter ham gear that primarily targeted the CB crowd. They had to adopt the name Siltronix for their Comanche and 1011 series of transceivers.
More current ham transceivers have general coverage receivers and are easily modified for general coverage transmit as well. Usually clip a wire or remove a diode or two.
All illegal as hell to transmit with on CB but there it is anyway!!
Then there is the whole story about the CB "export" radios!