Our bunch was often consulted by the local amateur community. We received many a compliment for or about our conversations. It was hotbed of experimentation and innovation. I don't think there was a "straight" radio in the bunch. About the same mix of radios here with a bit more emphasis on Benton Harbor green and a couple of Johnson Viking II CDC's . Right of passage was a home brew sideband rig.
It was different then. Oddly, much like it is here on WWDX.
It's all rock and roll to me .....
Just a few examples:
300 baud audio modems
Uniden cordless phone , 49MHz/46MHz > cross band to my uPD858 base.
900MHz back haul infrastructure to remote access a mountain top, solar powered Xcvr.
SSTV (just to piss off the truckers.)
Auto location via triangulation via successive approximation registers and 300 baud hand shakes followed by essentially a packet with azimuth and signal strength. Try hiding from us .
Another cross band repeater. This time a OS Max diesel powered endurance bird (70MHz RC) 49MHz/46MHz Ul>Dl and a variety of output frequencies.
The switchable power oscillator at 7.8, 10.695, 10.7, and 11.275 fed into a pair of 2879's in the mobile.
The 455KHz AM transmitter.
Mountain Bounce, otherwise known as Land Mountain Land (LML) Most of us could see Mount Rainer or Mount Olympus, or both.
Gee lets hang a coaxial co-linear off the Deception pass bridge and see who can hear us ....
Tacoma narrows bridge -----//-----
We tried to shunt feed the Space Needle and narrowly escaped jail time.
We did get a kite up over 800 feet in the air . Keeping the "long wire" matched was a bioatch. Probably would have fallen across multiple power lines as well as the kite weighing nearly 70 LBS.
Simultaneous broadcasting of pre-recorded material of a heinous and uncivilized nature from multiple stations all synchronized on a sub channel, when we knew the FCC was in town . Find that you shmoos , we're everywhere!
So , yeah