and horn lines dressed in black pants and a red windbreaker with a black and white vertical stripe on the left side; the guard wore the same windbreaker, black Bermuda shorts and an "Aussie" style hat. The season consisted mostly of parades, with few field contests. The corps owned one vehicle; a red step van to carry the equipment. In that first year of the corps' return, perhaps the corps' greatest asset was its new musical arranger, Phantom Regiment alumnus and future DCI Hall of Fame member, Jim Wren, who would go on to arrange the unit's brass music for the next 32 years. By 1970, Phantom was able to outfit the corps in new uniforms; a cadet-style jacket with a red diagonal sash dividing the black white side from the white left side, black pants with a white stripe, white buck shoes, and a shako with a 12-inch plume. The corps had grown to 89 members with 40 horns, 14 drums, 24 flags, 12 rifles, and a drum major. In 1971, Wren started adding the classical music pieces that would become Phantom's trademark along with the usual pop music that most corps were playing. On a Friday the 13th in that year, so the legend goes, all of the corps' buses ran out of fuel; the equipment truck caught fire, not just once, but twice; yet the corps went out and won that night's contest. Prior to the founding of DCI in 1972, the Phantom Regiment, like most corps of the time, was strictly a local organization. The members and the staff came from Rockford and its surrounding suburbs. Travel to contests was limited to perhaps a few hours of driving. The only "National" competition the corps had ever entered had been the 1964 VFW championships in Cleveland. The corps attended the first DCI competition, in Whitewater, Wisconsin, placing 23rd of 39 corps in prelims. In 1973, The corps returned to Whitewater and moved up to 14th place among 48 corps. In 1974, Phantom presented its first full program of all-classical musical selections. The corps had grown to DCI's maximum of 128 members, and it took its first extended tour, travelling to Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts en route to the DCI Championships in Ithaca, New York. The corps was beating many of the activity's traditional powers and earning a reputation as a power in its own right. At