General Location: Southeastern Pa.

Time Frame: 19??-1977

Background: Channel 16 was the channel reserved, by gentleman's agreement, for the exclusive use of SSB. This was at a time before 40 channel radios became legal in 1977, and when most of the SSB activity would move up to channels 36 to 40.  Most of the SSB'ers talked on the lower side of 16, but it was possible to run on the upper side as well if you weren't too close to the other group. Most of the people who talked on SSB back then, strived to portray themselves as "above" the chatter of the usual AM channel CB'er. With this in mind, they abandoned the use of "handles", 10 codes, and the typical "CB lingo" and instead referred to each other by first names, or by a unique club identifier number. They also adopted pseudo-ham like jargon, (But didn't quite get it right) and even bastardized the usage of the "Q" signals.  Because of the serious, rigid and straight-laced attitudes displayed there, most of my friends and I rarely hung out there, although many of us had gotten "numbers" to use on that rare occasion.  Rather than listing individuals (I can't even begin to remember them all), I'll list the known (to me) clubs from back then. For a while there seemed like there was new club forming every other month. I guess some people just didn't like being number XYZ-8764, so they had to start their own "club" so that they could be called "#1". In any case, here they are:

Members:

Echo Charlie

Country Side

Alpha-Sierra

Alpha-Tango

Radio-America

Keystone State Sidebanders (KSS)

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