Okay... Finally got it to the hobby shop today.
Told them the whole story and the consenus was that there was a "radio" glitch... but the only way to test would be to swap out the radio system.
While I was thinking about how much I wanted to spend on a replacement he said... maybe it's the crystals.
So I figured for $10 we would try that first.
That was it.
The theory is that at some point the crystal in the receiver got jostled loose inside the container... it worked fine while the car was not running but the rattling from the engine shook the crystal and the receiver went crazy.
So $10 worth of crystals fixed the problem.
Now to contemplate replacing it with a better system.
Thanks for everyone'e help.
I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.
-TK