I was reading new posts on 'Antique Radio Forums' and saw this post from someone that used to be an SBARC member back in the mid-sixties. The thread question was "What was your funniest moment in ham radio?"
OK, you asked for it. This happened about 1964 or '65 and takes place at the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club field day site which was in the hills above the town:
Because of the location that was chosen for the Field Day site, the two meter station had to be located a few hundred feet West of everyone else in order to get a line of sight shot into LA where all the contacts were. One of the hams drove his pickup truck down there and set me up as the two meter phone station. I had a borrowed Gonset Communicator III on the transmission hump of the truck, and a four element beam used for "T-Hunting" rigged to the driver's door where I could "armstrong" rotate it as needed. I worked about a hundred contacts for the club station and so contributed something to our overall score. However, I was the only operator for the two meter station. Therefore, as the wee hours arrived and the band was about "worked out", I was getting pretty sleepy.
As I got sleepier and sleepier in my operating position behind the wheel of the pickup truck, I would nod off and my head would fall forward, coming to rest on the horn ring on the truck steering wheel. The resulting blast would wake me up and I would tune around hunting for a station I hadn't worked for awhile, and then boredom and weariness would overtake me, causing me to nod off again and the process would repeat.
The next day, the camp was full of people grumpily enquiring what idiot kept blowing a car horn about every fifteen minutes around four o'clock in the morning !? People were trying to sleep! Once the cause became generally known, it became the joke of the camp. Fortunately for me, field day hams were a good-natured and tolerant lot in those days.
73,
_________________ Jim T. KB6GM