Does everybody remember the 4 big paging frequencies
between 30 and 50 MHZ? They were 35.22, 35.58 43.22 and 43.58
MHZ. They started out in the late 1950's on AM and ran a tape
loop which carried an announcement listing all the outstanding
pages at the time. There would often-times be an ID giving the
call sign and city of the paging company. Even back then,
operators were concerned about privacy so a paging message might
sound like:

	This is Radio Call Paging Service in Oklahoma City
paging 359 Call your office. 204, pickup at Sam's pharmacy. 183,
Family of 4 needs large dinner of ham, potatoes and peas.

	Yes, I actually remember a food service company using
that paging service for orders in the seventies.

	I wrote an article about how skip signals
presented problems for operators of these services and
interviewed the gentleman who ran and often-times was the voice
for Radio Call.

	The transmitter was a 250-watt AM station on 35.58 MHZ
and was located atop the Liberty Bank Building in down town
Oklahoma City according to a message they used to broadcast when
no messages were pending.

	The people who read the announcements on to the tape
were somewhere else in Oklahoma City and a phone line carried
the audio to the bank building.

	They ran not only voice announcements but tone groups
consisting of 3 single tones in the mid audio range or two
single tones in a slightly higher range so the system was
usually always paging somebody.

	Since it was AM, it also was audible on all sorts of
audio systems that were not supposed to be listening for paging.
RFI from that transmitter intermittedly bothered just about
anybody who had a PA system or recording studio in Oklahoma
City.

	The fellow who I interviewed said he had started the
company in 1955 and their first model of pager was still on
display in their office. He discribed it as a very long narrow
device that hung on a belt like a much more awkward version of
today's pagers.

	During the sixties and seventies, I tuned through those
4 frequencies often and they were excellent DX indicators.

	From Oklahoma, one could hear scores of paging systems
from all over the US and a few in South America.

	I remember hearing one in Spanish with the usual AM
signal and continuous tape loop but with a 50-HZ hum. It was
probably in Chile or Argentina as both countries use 50 HZ
power. I bet they just loved it when the band was open and all
the United States paging systems were probably roaring in there
since we could hear their's here.

	These AM tape loop systems began dying like flies in the
late seventies. Radio Call in OKC went dark in 1980 or 81 if my
memory serves me correctly and it was one of the last ones to
go. Those 4 frequencies don't seem to have much of anything on
them today but at one time, they were a tremendous DX indicator.

	I also remember the mobile telephone frequencies in the
VHF low band. As far as I know, Oklahoma and surrounding states
didn't use those frequencies but there were gobs of them in the
Great Lakes region as well as both the East and West Coasts and
possibly Canada.

	The town I went to high school in had it's police
department on 37.26 MHZ and so did police departments in what
seemed like half the United States. When there was skip, 37.26
MHZ was a waste land of chatter in which everybody was trying to
be courteous and professional but somebody was always unable to
communicate due to skip and I am sure the usefulness of the
frequency was almost nil at times.

	I think the FCC is trying to encourage public safety
agencies to simply give up allocations in the VHF low band of
30-50 MHZ. I wouldn't be surprised if the CB allocation at 27
MHZ is one-day removed and replaced with channels in the FRS
range around 462 MHZ.

	Let's face it. Folks do need dependable communications
for small business and public safety uses and they don't need
surprise band openings that make neighbors out of people who
would rather not hear each other at all.

	I certainly miss hearing Louisville, KY or Cleveland,
Ohio's PD and fire frequencies during Sporadic E openings but I
am sure they like their 800-MHZ systems much better since they
don't have to contend with transcontinental interruptions any
more.

Martin