Part 1 of 2:
I have had scanners in every car I have owned in the almost 50 years I have been driving as well as my parents’ cars before I got my license. Back in the day I also had CBs, that ended when I graduated to ham and GMRS. In my dad’s car when I was a teenager, he had a CB radio (it was all the rage then) and he even bought one of those weird 8-track scanners made by Bearcat. That weird scanner actually worked pretty well for our local police and fire channels.
We spent many family vacations in Dad’s Buick or Ford Torino, depending on what year it was, and Dad liked to listen to the CB. With crystal scanners however it was hit or miss, if the locals used the same freqs as our hometown departments we were able to hear stuff on the scanner but for the most part it was pretty quiet away from home.
Around home however I spent more time in Mom’s car going to and from school, the mall or wherever suburban kids had to go in the 70’s. I had a Regency 8-channel scanner and a 6-channel Radio Shack CB in her Pinto, then a Plymouth Valiant and later the Ford Granada.
When I was 16, I got my driver’s license. I was relegated to drive my mom’s car at first. I usually had no problem using it in the evenings and parts of the weekends but could get co-opted. My best friend, however, had a car, a 10-year-old Ford Galaxy 500 that of course we outfitted with a CB. He was not much for scanners however, so I usually brought my trusty 4-channel Midland pocket scanner.
Soon after I graduated high school, I got my first car of my own, a beat-up old Chevy Chevelle that had sat in my older sister’s driveway for years. They were happy to get rid of it and after a little work (and a lot of cleaning) we got it to run. Of course I installed whatever CB I had at the time, probably a 23-channel Radio Shack unit. I also added a crystal scanner, an 8-channel Regency.
At the time (late 1970’s and early 1980’s) trunk-lip antennas were the most popular for scanners and CB’s. I liked them as they worked well, were securely fastened and easy to install. Dad liked them as there were no holes to lower the trade-in value. Of course that was not an issue for my 69 Chevy, I would likely have to pay someone to take it away eventually. As radios were not my primary focus in my life at the time I did fine with the trunk-lip antennas.
After I started working full time, I bought a newer used car, this time a 3-year-old Ford Fairmont Futura. This was a sporty looking sedan. My dad liked it and steered me towards is as it had a relatively weak straight-6 (read: slow), the styling of the car made it look like it was going fast but I had to get out and push it to get it out of its own way. In the flatlands of Illinois, it did just fine but there were some hills in Wisconsin that I was afraid of getting a parking ticket while driving uphill in it.
As slow as the car was it really was a good ride for me. It ran well, was affordable on a young dispatcher’s salary and did a great job for me. I was working evenings in the dispatch center, going to community college during the day and a few nights a week doing fire shifts after I finished my EMT and Firefighter certifications. I had graduated to a 20-channel Regency scanner by then and needed the extra channels. I had a half-dozen fire channels for my local area, a bunch of police channels and the local railroads. On my sedan those trunk-lip antennas worked great.
When I graduated from college, I treated myself to my first new car, a 1981 Mustang. With a straight 4 and a 3-speed automatic it wasn’t any faster than the Fairmont, but it looked cool. More importantly my girlfriend liked it, so did my other one. It had less room for radios however, so I bought one of those CB’s where all the controls were in the mic. For a scanner I mounted my 20-channel Regency on the back of the center console. It was difficult to see but it worked just fine. I could usually tell what channel it was by the voice or context anyway. I tried a few other scanners now and then, including a few handhelds and smaller mobile scanners under the dash with this car as well.
After a couple years with this 4-cylinder Mustang my best friend bought a Mustang GT. Well, I had to have one too, so I got one. This thing had a 302 cu. V8, 4 speed stick-shift and was the fastest production car made in America at the time. I got that thing up to 130 MPH a few times and I still had RPMs to spare but the TRX tires I had were only rated to 120. As for radios I just popped in the same ones from the prior car.
For these two Mustangs (and the third that replaced the GT a couple years later) the hatch-back made the regular trunk-lips unusable. The way the hatch opened did not leave enough clearance for the antennas. If I used them on the outer edges, then the antenna stuck out at a weird angle. I made that work for a short scanner antenna by bending the element at the base but eventually that failed as I could never seem to get it threaded just right to properly position it upright. Eventually I found some adjustable hatchback lip-mounts that allowed me to properly orient the antenna when mounted to the side of the hatch.
My third Mustang had a wonky engine computer and would suddenly go into a fit of poor combustion, causing huge clouds of black smoke. The guys with the big pickups these days would love it as it “blew coal” on a regular basis. The problem was that when it did it wouldn’t drive, so I got stuck wherever it decided to smoke out. Ford, to its credit, took it back under the then brand new “Lemon Law”. I only had a couple thousand miles on it after about six months, so they bought it back for only a few hundred dollars less than what I paid.
I then bought a Ford Bronco II. This was my first truck, such as it was. It was 4WD but back then you had to stop and manually lock the front hubs before going into 4WD. I did not spring for the off-road tires, and I quickly found out what a mistake that was.
As for the radios I first used the dreaded Mag-mounts for the CB and scanner as we had a trip to Michigan planned for that week. We were going to take my brother-in-law’s old Chevy Nova since my Mustang was too unreliable. I surprised the BIL when I showed up with my brand new 4WD Monster Truck (well, a little Bronco II anyway) so I didn’t have time to properly mount antennas. For this trip I just stuffed the scanner between the seats and the CB laid on the floor behind the driver, both plugged into the cigar lighter socket. It worked.
We headed off for northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in search of Alco’s. For the non-railfans reading this, Alco built locomotives until the late 1960’s, and by the mid 1980’s were rare and highly prized by train nuts like me. Northern Wisconsin and Michigan were hotspots for Alco hunters, so we stalked them often. Some of these railroads also used old Baldwin locomotives, these were even more rare. The scanner was a huge help of course so I bought crystals for the GB&W, C&NW, Soo, MILW, LS&I and E&LS railroads.
I bought the Bronco on Thursday, we left for the North Woods early on Friday morning. We went straight up to Munising, MI where my BIL’s brother lived. He was still working when we arrived, so we decided to head out to a junction outside of town to try to catch the local job switching the interchange. It had rained all week long and what had once been a dirt road to the junction was now a linear mud pit. Not to worry, I have 4WD!
Nowadays I know that 4WD means only that you get stuck further away from home. Back then I thought it meant I could go anywhere, anytime. We headed off the blacktop into the mud and got almost a full hundred yards before we got stuck in the mud. As I was a 4WD driver for almost a full day by then I managed to get that little truck stuck so far down in the mud that we couldn’t even open the doors, we had to climb out the windows.
With crank-up windows (Remember those?) we couldn’t close one window all the way, the driver’s side one was left open partially as my arm wasn’t long nor removable enough to close it any further. Of course it was pouring down rain, cold and windy. I tried to cover the partially open window with my jacket (“Members Only” of course, this was the 80’s after all) held down by some rocks. We then walked the 8 miles into town and met my BIL’s brother at home. We dried off, had some dinner and then went to the local farm store and bought some steel rope and went back to where we left my truck.
(Continued in Part 2 below)
The jacket had blown off and wrapped itself around a nearby tree, leaving the window unblocked, the scanner (My Regency 20-channel pride and joy) was soaked. The CB was lying in a puddle on the floor in the back. We pulled out my little truck with that wire rope and the winch on the F250. $20 in quarters at the local National Pride and the exterior was clean enough. As things dried the smell of burnt mud being baked off the exhaust permeated the upholstery and the interior itself was soggy for the rest of the trip. The CB was toast but surprisingly the scanner still worked. That made what was a bad start to the trip more bearable.
When I got home a few days later I dropped my poor 5-day old truck off at a detail shop and a couple days and a couple hundred dollars later it looked and smelled almost new again. Later on, I joined the JDTDH (Just Drill The Darn Hole) club. I popped in a couple 3/8” antenna mounts, one for a CB and one for a scanner. I hadn’t discovered NMO’s yet. While that old Regency 20-channel crystal scanner still worked it was not practical as a mobile scanner in such a cramped interior. By then I had a BC20/20 scanner as well and discovered that it fit the pocket shelf above the glovebox perfectly. By drilling a couple strategically placed holes I was able to just press-fit it in and it lived there the rest of the time I owned that little truckster.
I have had scanners in every car I have owned in the almost 50 years I have been driving as well as my parents’ cars before I got my license. Back in the day I also had CBs, that ended when I graduated to ham and GMRS. In my dad’s car when I was a teenager, he had a CB radio (it was all the rage then) and he even bought one of those weird 8-track scanners made by Bearcat. That weird scanner actually worked pretty well for our local police and fire channels.
We spent many family vacations in Dad’s Buick or Ford Torino, depending on what year it was, and Dad liked to listen to the CB. With crystal scanners however it was hit or miss, if the locals used the same freqs as our hometown departments we were able to hear stuff on the scanner but for the most part it was pretty quiet away from home.
Around home however I spent more time in Mom’s car going to and from school, the mall or wherever suburban kids had to go in the 70’s. I had a Regency 8-channel scanner and a 6-channel Radio Shack CB in her Pinto, then a Plymouth Valiant and later the Ford Granada.
When I was 16, I got my driver’s license. I was relegated to drive my mom’s car at first. I usually had no problem using it in the evenings and parts of the weekends but could get co-opted. My best friend, however, had a car, a 10-year-old Ford Galaxy 500 that of course we outfitted with a CB. He was not much for scanners however, so I usually brought my trusty 4-channel Midland pocket scanner.
Soon after I graduated high school, I got my first car of my own, a beat-up old Chevy Chevelle that had sat in my older sister’s driveway for years. They were happy to get rid of it and after a little work (and a lot of cleaning) we got it to run. Of course I installed whatever CB I had at the time, probably a 23-channel Radio Shack unit. I also added a crystal scanner, an 8-channel Regency.
At the time (late 1970’s and early 1980’s) trunk-lip antennas were the most popular for scanners and CB’s. I liked them as they worked well, were securely fastened and easy to install. Dad liked them as there were no holes to lower the trade-in value. Of course that was not an issue for my 69 Chevy, I would likely have to pay someone to take it away eventually. As radios were not my primary focus in my life at the time I did fine with the trunk-lip antennas.
After I started working full time, I bought a newer used car, this time a 3-year-old Ford Fairmont Futura. This was a sporty looking sedan. My dad liked it and steered me towards is as it had a relatively weak straight-6 (read: slow), the styling of the car made it look like it was going fast but I had to get out and push it to get it out of its own way. In the flatlands of Illinois, it did just fine but there were some hills in Wisconsin that I was afraid of getting a parking ticket while driving uphill in it.
As slow as the car was it really was a good ride for me. It ran well, was affordable on a young dispatcher’s salary and did a great job for me. I was working evenings in the dispatch center, going to community college during the day and a few nights a week doing fire shifts after I finished my EMT and Firefighter certifications. I had graduated to a 20-channel Regency scanner by then and needed the extra channels. I had a half-dozen fire channels for my local area, a bunch of police channels and the local railroads. On my sedan those trunk-lip antennas worked great.
When I graduated from college, I treated myself to my first new car, a 1981 Mustang. With a straight 4 and a 3-speed automatic it wasn’t any faster than the Fairmont, but it looked cool. More importantly my girlfriend liked it, so did my other one. It had less room for radios however, so I bought one of those CB’s where all the controls were in the mic. For a scanner I mounted my 20-channel Regency on the back of the center console. It was difficult to see but it worked just fine. I could usually tell what channel it was by the voice or context anyway. I tried a few other scanners now and then, including a few handhelds and smaller mobile scanners under the dash with this car as well.
After a couple years with this 4-cylinder Mustang my best friend bought a Mustang GT. Well, I had to have one too, so I got one. This thing had a 302 cu. V8, 4 speed stick-shift and was the fastest production car made in America at the time. I got that thing up to 130 MPH a few times and I still had RPMs to spare but the TRX tires I had were only rated to 120. As for radios I just popped in the same ones from the prior car.
For these two Mustangs (and the third that replaced the GT a couple years later) the hatch-back made the regular trunk-lips unusable. The way the hatch opened did not leave enough clearance for the antennas. If I used them on the outer edges, then the antenna stuck out at a weird angle. I made that work for a short scanner antenna by bending the element at the base but eventually that failed as I could never seem to get it threaded just right to properly position it upright. Eventually I found some adjustable hatchback lip-mounts that allowed me to properly orient the antenna when mounted to the side of the hatch.
My third Mustang had a wonky engine computer and would suddenly go into a fit of poor combustion, causing huge clouds of black smoke. The guys with the big pickups these days would love it as it “blew coal” on a regular basis. The problem was that when it did it wouldn’t drive, so I got stuck wherever it decided to smoke out. Ford, to its credit, took it back under the then brand new “Lemon Law”. I only had a couple thousand miles on it after about six months, so they bought it back for only a few hundred dollars less than what I paid.
I then bought a Ford Bronco II. This was my first truck, such as it was. It was 4WD but back then you had to stop and manually lock the front hubs before going into 4WD. I did not spring for the off-road tires, and I quickly found out what a mistake that was.
As for the radios I first used the dreaded Mag-mounts for the CB and scanner as we had a trip to Michigan planned for that week. We were going to take my brother-in-law’s old Chevy Nova since my Mustang was too unreliable. I surprised the BIL when I showed up with my brand new 4WD Monster Truck (well, a little Bronco II anyway) so I didn’t have time to properly mount antennas. For this trip I just stuffed the scanner between the seats and the CB laid on the floor behind the driver, both plugged into the cigar lighter socket. It worked.
We headed off for northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in search of Alco’s. For the non-railfans reading this, Alco built locomotives until the late 1960’s, and by the mid 1980’s were rare and highly prized by train nuts like me. Northern Wisconsin and Michigan were hotspots for Alco hunters, so we stalked them often. Some of these railroads also used old Baldwin locomotives, these were even more rare. The scanner was a huge help of course so I bought crystals for the GB&W, C&NW, Soo, MILW, LS&I and E&LS railroads.
I bought the Bronco on Thursday, we left for the North Woods early on Friday morning. We went straight up to Munising, MI where my BIL’s brother lived. He was still working when we arrived, so we decided to head out to a junction outside of town to try to catch the local job switching the interchange. It had rained all week long and what had once been a dirt road to the junction was now a linear mud pit. Not to worry, I have 4WD!
Nowadays I know that 4WD means only that you get stuck further away from home. Back then I thought it meant I could go anywhere, anytime. We headed off the blacktop into the mud and got almost a full hundred yards before we got stuck in the mud. As I was a 4WD driver for almost a full day by then I managed to get that little truck stuck so far down in the mud that we couldn’t even open the doors, we had to climb out the windows.
With crank-up windows (Remember those?) we couldn’t close one window all the way, the driver’s side one was left open partially as my arm wasn’t long nor removable enough to close it any further. Of course it was pouring down rain, cold and windy. I tried to cover the partially open window with my jacket (“Members Only” of course, this was the 80’s after all) held down by some rocks. We then walked the 8 miles into town and met my BIL’s brother at home. We dried off, had some dinner and then went to the local farm store and bought some steel rope and went back to where we left my truck.
(Continued in Part 2 below)
The jacket had blown off and wrapped itself around a nearby tree, leaving the window unblocked, the scanner (My Regency 20-channel pride and joy) was soaked. The CB was lying in a puddle on the floor in the back. We pulled out my little truck with that wire rope and the winch on the F250. $20 in quarters at the local National Pride and the exterior was clean enough. As things dried the smell of burnt mud being baked off the exhaust permeated the upholstery and the interior itself was soggy for the rest of the trip. The CB was toast but surprisingly the scanner still worked. That made what was a bad start to the trip more bearable.
When I got home a few days later I dropped my poor 5-day old truck off at a detail shop and a couple days and a couple hundred dollars later it looked and smelled almost new again. Later on, I joined the JDTDH (Just Drill The Darn Hole) club. I popped in a couple 3/8” antenna mounts, one for a CB and one for a scanner. I hadn’t discovered NMO’s yet. While that old Regency 20-channel crystal scanner still worked it was not practical as a mobile scanner in such a cramped interior. By then I had a BC20/20 scanner as well and discovered that it fit the pocket shelf above the glovebox perfectly. By drilling a couple strategically placed holes I was able to just press-fit it in and it lived there the rest of the time I owned that little truckster.
