Ch 19: 146.520 – Ham Radio Call (Local old men. Morning nets. Dad, WB2XRP.)
His father’s call sign. A lump formed in Leo’s throat. He hadn’t known.
He clicked the knob back to Channel 1. The static returned to its innocent hum. He closed the notebook and set the Motorola CP1300 back on the workbench.
Always the thumping.
Leo stared at the words. The static from the CP1300 suddenly felt less like emptiness and more like a held breath.
Ch 21: 158.925 – Summer ’08. Thumping. Screaming. Then nothing. Talked to Hank. Hank said “forget it.” I didn’t forget.
He never programmed that frequency. But sometimes, late at night, when the house was dark and the wind rattled the shed roof he still hadn’t fixed, Leo would pick up the radio, turn it to Channel 21, and just… listen. motorola cp1300 frequency list
Now the old man was gone, and the radio was Leo’s inheritance. He’d plugged it in, charged the dead battery overnight, and clicked the rotary knob. Static. Pure, beautiful, empty static. The radio worked, but without a frequency list, it was just a white-noise machine.
And the silence that followed was the loudest thing he’d ever known.
But his father’s handwriting screamed from the page: DO NOT USE. Ch 19: 146
Leo’s father had carried it for twenty years. First as a park ranger, then as a security coordinator, and finally, in the quiet last years before retirement, as a man who just liked to listen.
Leo felt a chill. His father had been a rule-follower. The idea of him eavesdropping on the state police was… thrilling. He kept reading.
The radio on the workbench looked like a brick. A scuffed, olive-drab brick with a stubby antenna and a keypad worn smooth by a thousand thumbs. It was a Motorola CP1300, a relic from an era when “portable communication” meant a five-pound anchor on your belt. A lump formed in Leo’s throat
Ch 11: 162.550 – NOAA Weather (Boring until it isn’t) Ch 12: 155.340 – Hospital Link (Ambulance to ER. Never happy news.) Ch 13: 159.900 – State Police Tac-3 (Don’t transmit. Just listen. They don’t like listeners.)
It wasn’t a proper manual. It was a dog-eared, coffee-stained spiral-bound memo book, the kind his father always kept in his breast pocket. The first few pages were shopping lists and reminders: “Fix shed roof. Buy birdseed. Call Mike about chainsaw.”