The Place: The outskirts of Norristown Pa.
The Time: Winter of 1978-1979
Recorded With: A Sears cassette recorder from a Midland 13-885.
The Channels: 13 and 23
The Notable Characters:
Bob "Arab": First heard on the tape. But he soon gets squashed by….
Cactus: All fired up with a Cobra 135 driving a D&A Phantom 500 amplifier, which makes sure he can be heard over all else. He also later conducts the "Civil Defense Test".
Dave: Records the fun, and puts in occasional comments as things progress.
Albert: First heard on SSB, then later on channel 23, espousing his views on the opposite sex. Note: "Baby Bertha" was a nickname for a D&A Hornet amplifier which I had at the time.
Ray: Appears briefly and says "You’re listening to 27.111", as we were running full to the left on his clarifier.
Fred: Makes a brief appearance on SSB and tells me that: "You sound good".
Sharon: A pawn in the game between the guys on Channel 13, and the guys on 23. But she enjoys her part maybe just a little too much.
Regina "Dizzy": A friend of Sharon, and the object of Cactus’ mock "affections". Works at the local Burger King. Also the first and only female in my tech school electronics class. Her physical "features" become the source of some confusion for Albert.
"Uncle" Chuck, "Rare Bird": Instigator of much of the conflict as a part of our on-going campaign of mutual ribbing.
John "Jolly Roger": Is visiting Cactus, and appears briefly at the end to dispel the rumor that he likes "crabs", and has jelly on his "stick".
Background:
It was shortly after the Christmas season and, like in previous years, this Christmas season brought a horde of new people into CB radio, along with their seemingly endless inane requests for radio and time checks. Someone in our group (Probably Albert or myself) started sending the radio checks up to Channel 23 for fun. Channel 23 was considered a local "test" channel, since it often had class "C" telemetry stations on it, which created a fairly high interference level. It was also the home channel for Chuck, Cactus, Jolly Roger, and a few other guys, who lived close enough that the interference didn’t bother them. These guys soon caught on to what we were doing, and sent some of their own people down to Channel 13 to needle us.
About the first 3 minutes of this tape takes place on Channel 13. It’s total bedlam, with a rash of noise, stations bumping heads, and then us finally moving to SSB to disperse the crowd. I was not taking part during most of this, as I had a visitor (Mitch) at the time, who was in the process of leaving. The remainder of the tape takes place on Channel 23, where we all had a few laughs over the situation, although at least one person got their feelings hurt in the process. Albert was as jovial as ever, and Cactus provided a few breaks of comic relief as well.
Channel 13&23 clip Approx 18 min, mp3 format.