I wasn’t entirely certain where the “mobile” portion of the Phil-Mont Mobile Radio Club’s name came from. I guess I had assumed “mobile” was more of a stand-in for “the rig is small enough it can be removed from the shack,” but nope. The “mobile” was for hams who very much wanted to be on-air while on the go, not just after having moved from point A to point B.
Now, gentle reader, I invite you to accompany me into the 1950s.
One section of the Phil-Mont website is devoted to the repeaters and includes a link to more information about Jim Spencer. That link leads to the December 2006 issue of the club newsletter, The Blurb, which is largely devoted to a remembrance of Spencer W3BBB SK. He was a charter member of the club, a builder, involved with ham activities at the Franklin Institute, a tamer of CB users, and seriously into mobile communication centers. Based on this newsletter, if a bus or bookmobile parked near this guy for too long, pretty soon you’d hear it on 10 meters.
The Blurb sent me on a quick web search for the movie “Every Single Minute.” It’s on YouTube, preceded by a (differently) dated introductory interview. I urge you to spend 23 minutes taking in the low-quality but delightful video. From a purely informational perspective, the 1959 movie depicts mid-century equipment, vehicles, and costumes; on-air communication conventions; and some details about flooding that followed Hurricane Diane (1955) and the club’s efforts to assist during the emergency.
From a cultural perspective…the narration! The deeply serious repetition of “every. Single. Minute.” Getting directions to Conshohocken prior to the advent of GPS or the Blue Route. The suggestion that foxhunting might be useful to discover “enemy agents.” The pronunciation of “mobile” as “mo-beel.” This is an incredibly ’50s text and you owe it to yourself to open this little window on the past.
So now I have context for just how mobile the Phil-Mont Mobile Radio Club was in its early years. (And an explanation for the rather hideous older logo, visible in photos in the 2006 newsletter and still occasionally popping up, featuring a caricature of a ham talking while at the wheel.) That mobility endures. There’s a Drive Time Net from 5–6 PM on weeknights, when many participants are commuting. And of course there’s PLOTA—Parking Lots on the Air—so after the exam session new hams can get on the air out of a trunk in the Giant parking lot.
This is the part I really enjoy about history and archives: connections between then and now, all the fun little stories that are illuminated, the glimpses of personalities, the objects and images that endure, and a past that is always (if only slightly) a foreign country.