DTC hath wroth:

Brings back fond memories of the "RCC wars" (radio common carrier).

In Texas, they were all pretty cooperative with reciprocal roaming.

In California, specifically the Orange County area near Smog Angeles,
the RCC's were perptually suing each other. About 5 years ago, I got
an invite to do a deposition on a running case that started in about
1970. The original parties are dead or gone, but the new business
owners have picked up the torch.

Rates
in the '70s were typically $40 a month which included mobile radio rental
and unlimited minutes and free roaming. Denton Texas with the two
universities had like 300 users in the early/mid '70s. When the rates
jumped from $20 to $50 per month (on *TWO* VHF channels), it dropped to
like fifteen users.

L.A. had a 3 year waiting list for VHF channels. My license was from
Nevada.

The Secode was indeed much easier to program than the Motorola control
head.

Program? I just had a Secode control head in my car connected to an
ordinary G.E. Progress Line on the shop channels. I was just trying
to impress the ladies, not talk to anyone on the phone. If I needed
to make a phone call, I would use one of the ham systems. I
eventually replaced the Prog Line with a T1234 mobile phone using the
same control head.

Of
course I would never whistle off the connect tone of an incoming call meant
for another user and grab the channel when it went back to idle.

I had two pieces of brass pipe tuned to 1500 and 2805 for the purpose.
Incidentally, my senior project in kollege was designing an all solid
state Secode Selector. The original Secode model 70 or 90 selector
was a mechanical marvel and a nightmare to fix.

I eventually upgraded to the all solid state Motos and smaller control heads.

That would probably be a Motorola Pulsar. The T1234 was solid state,
but with one pair of crystals per channel.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558