Thanks for all the input, guys. Helpful and interesting. Even the humor hit the spot!!
But, would you believe it, I can't reproduce the phenomenon. No more chatter. I have to think Rodney (in his first response) and bobmac010 got it right. The only thing I did differently was put more charge into the new 1100 maH flight battery. I still have no way to check "state of charge" (just getting started) of a battery.
I sure learned a lot about radio communication from this exercise and all the responses, expecially the comments from bobmac010 and the link to the German site.

Thanks all,
Frank