General Location: Norristown and vicinity.

Time Frame: 1975-1979

Background: Channel 15 was yet another "adult" channel which came into being in the mid 70's in the greater Norristown area. This was during the time when CB had started becoming a nationwide "fad", and the majority of the then 23 channels were literally taken by one group or another.  This crowding often led to conflicts as people scrambled to find a clear channel to converse on. The guys on Channel 15 were as territorial as the rest of us, and they came up with a clever method to deny access to people who were not a part of their group. They decided to put on the facade of strict legality. They all started using their FCC call letters, and would not allow anyone else on the channel who didn't.  Since many people either ran without a license or, for whatever reason, did not want to use their call signs, this allowed the guys on 15 to use the excuse of legality to justify ignoring anyone who didn't abide by "the rules". The irony was that most of these guys, who were attempting to portray themselves as the bastions of legality and of all things chaste and pure, also had illegally modified or ham radios, and they would jump to SSB on the freeband whenever the DX was running.  Some of them even had amplifiers.  This hypocrisy was well known to anyone who listened around for any length of time, and it was because of our own occasional participation in activities like these, that our groups never used our call letters.  But I guess the Channel 15 guys figured that the F.C.C. was just too dumb to figure out what the rest of the locals already knew, and wouldn't realize that the guy they monitored using his call letters on Channel 15 one minute, was the same guy running power on 27.365 (before it was legal) later on that same night.  Luckily for them, the F.C.C. was not in the area during the time (Although there were always those persistent rumors).

This group was hostile to us primarily due to bleed over induced friction.  One of my neighbors got into CB in 1975, as a result of "fad popularity" and then decided that he wanted to hang out on Channel 15, even though every time I would transmit on Channel 11/10, I'd completely desense his receive. Then he had the nerve to get upset about it. This ushered in all sorts of accusations which then led to mutual jamming, as well as people making judgment calls about who had what right to talk on the channel, based on the content of our conversations.  Somehow us talking about school activities or busting each other's stones was not a "valid" or "worthy" topic for CB radio, yet their lambasting about the previous night's hockey game, or venting frustrations with their jobs was ok.  Never mind that most of our group had been involved with CB radio long before these guys even knew what it was.  Hmmm..... 

This group eventually moved permanently to 27.365 LSB, when it became a legal channel (36) in 1977, and with their acquisition of quality ham radios and beam antennas, those of them who stuck with CB as a hobby, largely solved their bleed over issues with us.

Members:

Bed Bug

Zotts

Gas Man

Little Plumber

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