The Place: The General Pottstown Area
The Time: April 2006
Channel: 21
Recorded With: A Toshiba laptop from a Realistic TRC-451 on my gutter mount 102" whip.
The Main Characters:
Firestarter: First person on the tape. He's being deliberately provacative and trolling for a battle.
Spitfire: Is "County Wide" as he and Firestarter set up to do battle with the "Visitors".
Two-Watt Willy: Makes the trip down from Reading (20 miles away) in his "Base station killing Dodge Van" to show Firestarter who the big man is.
Papa Bear: Two Watt's accomplice who also made the long trip is his high powered mobile.
JR: The true big man on the hill. With a lot of power and a big 7 element beam antenna, he can spank even Two Watt's high powered mobile from 12 miles away.
Green Dog: Is truly fed up with Firestarter, and decides to key up long term and doesn't care if he burns out his amp in the process.
Background: This situation is the culmination of a slowly festering conflict which started when a few of the locals started giving Firestarter a hard time for the way he runs his station, the fact that he's a ham, and financially well off (and brags about it). Firestarter then started giving some of the locals grief back for trying to disrupt him when he talks. This in turn brought on even more cases of interference, and each time, Firestarter ratchets up the rhetoric as he presses the buttons of those who are easily angered. Firestarter recently put up a 3 element beam (which he later traded to me) and was showboating how much stronger his signal was. In this night's episode, Two Watt Willy, a local from the town of Reading, decided to bring his highly charged mobile down to the greater Pottstown area in an attempt to show Firestarter who the "big man" really is, and he attempts to get in between Firestarter and Spitfire, who are fairly close neighbors and also running a bit of power. Firestarter eggs Willy on and for a while it seemed as if Willy's mobile couldn't quite get over him to everyone. Other people come out of the woodwork and join in the fray, and at times all you can hear is heterodyne. Both Firestarter and Spitfire were doing a fair job of making it over most of the "Hash and trash" to my location 10 miles west. Eventually Willy started heading away from their neck of the woods (And back toward me) and he then managed to finally win the battle. But the biggest surprise was JR's base squashing Willy's mobile from 12 miles away. It all goes to show the power of antenna gain and elevation. Eventually the normally jovial and in-control Firestarter actually loses his cool with Green Dog and drops to channel 20, and starts playing Radio DJ. It was not his proudest moment.
Part 1: Approx 35 min, mp3 format.
Part 2: Approx 35 min, mp3 format.