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 Every year, thousands of Scouts get on the air to talk to other Scouts around the world via Amateur Radio. This activity first got started long before the days of social media, cell phones and Internet access, and is more popular today than ever before!
The Quad-County ARC is planning to set up a station and invite local Scouts to talk to their counterparts across the country and around the world on the weekend of October 19th and 20th. QCARC Vice President and Scouting Liaison Officer Peach Caltagarone, AB3OG has graciously offered the use of the hilltop cabin at Hummingbird Speedway in support of this event.
The plan is to open the station to the Scouts and their parents with several hams and Scout leaders present at all times the station is open to assist the Scouts in getting on the air and making radio contact with other Scouts worldwide. Volunteers are needed to make this a successful event.
 Mark your calendars for the weekend of October 12 and 13th. The Pensylvania QSO Party is “The Friendly Contest” and an on-the-air activity that is a lot of fun. Each year, you can represent your county as other hams try to work a “clean sweep” of all 67 counties, and our Quad Counties are some of the most sought-after!
Here's your chance to see how it feels to be a ham some place in the Western Pennsylvania Section that's important for a change! You can operate from your home (be sure to list Quad-County ARC as your club when you submit your log!), or we may get together at a central location and try to set an all-time record high score for one of our counties as a multi-operatior, multi-transmitter entry.
Even if contests aren’t your thing, you should give the PA QSO Party a shot anyway, since it’s more like an on-the-air “Old Home Week” reunion rather than a hard-core contest. Every year, you will find lots of former Pennsylvania hams who enjoy talking to us back in the old home state, and you’ll also run into a lot of old friends you haven’t talked to in years! You might even run into a ham down the street who you’ve never heard on the air before. You’ll never know just who you may run into unless you get on the air and join in the fun.
 Hi everybody
Since I was just sitting here, I thought that I could show you all what I found at the ham-fest in Butler last Sunday.
Well, lets go back to the beginning in this story. In 1978, I became interested in ham-radio satellites, so called OSCAR satellites. Way back then, the AMSAT OSCAR 7 was the satellite to work. It had an orbit that made it show up every 90 minutes, and covered Europe, northern Africa, and also the US East Coast. To work US East Coast stations, you had about 5 minutes before it went down under the horizon again, so you had to be quick!
Now to the more technical part, the radio you see here at the right, is an Icom 402, it was the state of the art in late 70’s if you wanted to do some SSB on 70cm. It has 3w out-put, and that is not very much, but then again, your average 2m FM radio had a high-power setting of 10w. I used an Icom 402 on the uplink, 435 Mhz LSB, and then the signal from the satellite came back on 145 Mhz USB. The 402 was hooked up to a 46 element J-beam, and the antenna for down-link was a simple 4 element yagi. Right at the 2m yagi, I had a low-noise preamp, to help my Kenwood TS-700 hear the weak signals coming back from the satellite. I would say, that I worked a few hundred stations via OSCAR satellites.
Now to complete this little story. At the hamfest, I paid $10 for this radio in close to mint condition! Needless to say, it made my day! Of course, there aren’t many 70 cm stations around Clearfield — much less SSB ones — but late last night before I went to bed, I went into my shack, and for some reason I tuned around the band and heard somebody! It was Joe W3BC, and he was operating from W3SO in Altoona, so that was my first QSO on my new “old” rig, Joe also gave me the frequencies for 2m and 6m, since what I stumbled into was the VHF contest, lucky them!
Hope this little essay was worth reading :)
PS: For all you who are interested, there is a 2m version of this radio and a 6m version, Icom 202 and Icom 502, there is also a fm 2m, Icom 215.
Lars
PS2: This is a 70cm Halo antenna I built for the radio, it’s horizontally polarized and it is Omni directional (same radiation all directions)
Update on Halo, just worked W3SO, Altoona, made op laugh! Will listen for other stations also….
Hey all, here is a good SDR receiver that you can use, to f.x listen to your own signal.
Have fun!!
Lars
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
 I just worked a Japan station on 21.365.00 100watts!!
 Well, here we go again!
Remember a while ago, when I wrote about needing a project in order to stay sane, while my shoulder healed? Well, I sure found one!
If you look at the picture at the right, that’s it!
It’s a fantastic little rig from Kenwood, when they still made simple but very good HF stations – no menus, no electronic band-switch, etc.
The model number is TS-130s, and it covers 80m -10m, including the WARC bands, it’s got 100w output and is a cw/ssb rig only, but hey, its a great rig for ragchewing, field-day, beginners’ rig, or when going camping! :)
When I got it, someone had dropped the top lid while looking inside, resulting in tearing the wire off from internal speaker, but with the help from some junked speakers, that was an easy fix. Then came the question why the RF power came and went. Well, what really was wrong, was a voltage regulator, sitting on the heat sink, and it was supposed to be insulated from ground. As you might already have guessed, it was not really…that is to say, the little washer with a little flange on, that is supposed to keep the screw from touching the regulator, was damaged, so when keying the rig, sometimes it made contact, and sometimes not…. After having found this, it now works just as new!
Speaking of cleaning, now I’m going to tell you what not ever to do!! (AND I MEAN THAT!)
When cleaning knobs, do not EVER try to do that in a sink, without a strainer! Why? I’ll tell you why, if you haven’t felt your heart fly up into your throat, YOU WILL! Also, if you haven’t had to take the drain apart, YOU WILL!
Now, if you have stopped laughing, and stopped saying S****D I***T, I can tell you, I now know how it feels! I was just lucky that the knob wasn’t flushed out. Having put it all together again, I buffed up the scuffed paint on the case. It looks so good, that I don’t want to let it go, but since it’s only a project rig, I must (at least that’s what XYL says…)
A radio in this condition sells really fast, and so did this. Roger KB3ZKJ, is now the happy owner. Congrats Roger!
Your storyteller
Lars KB3WBT
 Congratulations to Jack AA3AZ for his most recent accomplishment 5 band DXCC
 During the month of January, the Hamshack Net has moved to the WAN Repeater System. Testing will continue all month. Meet us there every Wednesday at 7:00 pm on a WAN repeater near you!
The wide availibility of WAN repeaters should allow handheld users an opportunity to check in by using a local repeater instead of DXing the 147.315 machine which may be dozens of miles away!
Here is a recording of the first session (6.5MB download)
This is the second WAN session, January 9, 2013 (12.7 MB)
 Hello all Lars here.
Looks like I will have about 6 months, before I’m healed and so I have been thinking of a little something to do in the meantime.
You see the rig at the right here, it’s my beautiful Kenwood TS-520 and its a so called “hybrid rig” it means that the radio have both old time tubes and transistors, the tubes are just used in the transmitter “PA”, but easily delivers a nice and clean 100w out.
Now to my crazy idea, if you guys know of anybody who wants to get rid of his old non working TS-520, 520s or 520se, even TS-820, 830 or even TS-530 would work fine, I would be happy to buy for around $90- 100, just as something to do…. As you might have figured out, cheaper is better, since trying to get back to shape, (torn rotator cuff) so I can get back to work again, isn’t cheap…
Mind You, I’m not a repair pro, but hoping to learn “how to”
Thank you for taking time to read this…
Lars KB3WBT
PS: E-mail me at sm7fyw at hotmail.com
Quad-County members participated in a number of contests over the summer months, with good results! Here are some of the official results:
ARRL June VHF Contest
Current Club President Herb Murray W3TM and Secretary Joe Shupienis W3BC hit the bricks to participate in the Rover-Limited category. Activating 5 grids and handing out 92 QSOs, their final official score was 5,406 points, with contacts being made in 48 grids! It was a lot of fun, and they activated some grids neither had operated from before, notably FN02, EN92 and EN91, along with FN00 and FN01. We are fortunate to live in or near so many “rare” grids, and the 6 meter stations were grateful!
That score was enough to win the WPA Section, and to take second place in the Atlantic Division!
Field Day
Overcoming confusion about our location, we stuck it out and had a great time. Finishing in the top 10 of all stations in the WPA section, we scored 2,550 points and most importantly had 26 participants who helped put our signals on the air for the full duration of the event!
That score allowed us to take First Place honors in our 2A-Commercial category for both the Western Pennsylvania Section and the Atlantic Division. We finished 6th place in our category, Nationwide.
Great work, everybody!
CQ WW DX (SSB)
This is “The Big One” — the 900 pound gorilla of contests. Current Vice-President Peach Caltagarone AB3OG graciously opened up his Hummingbird Speedway facilities to the club, and the 16 members and guests who stopped by to operate and observe. We strung up a number of antennas, including a pair of crossed G5RVs and W3BC’s “Half-Rhombic,” a 300 foot monster pointed at Europe.
Results were very good! We logged 91 counties — that’s almost DXCC in a single weekend! the antennas worked flawlessly, digging out European, African and Asian stations well into the wee hours. Then it was back at it Sunday morning, with all the comforts of home — W3BC brought an HD TV and antenna. We were able to receive 11 HDTV stations, and could keep an eye on the football games as we racked up our own score on the air!
Our goal was to introduce non-contesters to RadioSport, to allow everyone to try their hand in a big contest, and to have fun. We did that and more! We finished 2nd Place in the 3rd call district, 17th place Nationwide, 27th place in North America, and 96th place worldwide. With over 8,000 other stations sending in logs, that is quite an accomplishment!
The CQ WW DX (CW) weekend is coming up, as is the ARRL Sweepstakes (SSB) weekend. Gear up for these and be sure to include “Quad County Amateur Radio Club” as your club to help out our club aggregate score! Whatever you favorite on-air activity, it’s coming to your radio soon!
 With the risk, that you might say, I can’t do that, I say YES YOU CAN!
The other day, I was looking around for a cheap and simple antenna for my brother in-law. You see, he was asking me if it’s hard to get a amateur radio license, and if the equipment is expensive, so I told him that he could borrow a radio and coax from me, but, I didn’t have any antenna that he could use.
That’s when I got to think about a neighbor of mine, a few years ago, he asked me if I wanted an old CB antenna that had been laying outside for the last 20-25 years, and at the time, I had what I needed, so I said no thank you, but now it might be a good idea to ask him, and guess what, it was still laying out there, he said, all he used it for was to knock down hornets nests. So I got the “antenna” for free, took it all apart, cleaned it up, and put it together again.
 From what I could figure out, it was 11′ tall, and once it did have 3 ground plane-rods. Further more, it also had a coil of some sorts, connecting the center of the PL connector with the 11′ radiator, and since I had no clue of size, or number of turns, I started to look on the net for a similar antenna, but it was still just guesswork. As you can see, on the picture at the right, I used what I had sitting around, so its about 1 1/2 turns. Then of coarse I didn’t know how long the ground-plane-rods originally were, so I came up with a “one of a kind” solution. Since I didn’t have any aluminum pipes that would fit, I went another route, if you look close, I put “inserts” into the 3/4″ holes, then 3 pieces of 6′ fiber-glass rods were inserted, and on the rods, I wound about 7′ 22 gauge insulated copper-wire. The fiber-glass rods can be found at Lowe’s, they are used as “driveway” markers. I used electrical tape, to hold the wires in place, but shrink-tubes would be nicer.
Now too the fun part, would this contraption work?? As I said earlier, this was an old CB antenna once upon a time, but what is it now?? I hooked up my trusty TS-440 sat, it has its own antenna-tuner, so I tuned in 28,500 and hit tune, well it showed SWR about 1-1:3, so I moved down to 28,020 and low and behold, it showed SWR 1-1:2! Well I thought, just because it shows low SWR, it doesn’t have to be a good antenna, so I tuned over the 10m band, and heard a station in El Paso Tx I had worked before, he was about S 5-5, so I called him, and he did answer, and gave me a solid S 5-9!! This told me that it was not just a pile of junk sitting on my back porch, so then I tried to tune it on 12m, and there it showed about SWR 1-1:3, which is not to bad!! This antenna turned out to work all bands, except 17m, and I guess 160m!! Not to bad of a pile of scrap!!
So now, I’m asking all of you, go out and “save” old CB antennas, give them a second chance, and put them to work on our HAM-bands! When you are done, tell us how good it works, and how you managed to save it from the “scrapyard” Good luck, and hope to see your article here soon!
Lars KB3WBT the Antennafarmer
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Every year, thousands of Scouts get on the air to talk to other Scouts around the world via Amateur Radio. This activity first got started long before the days of social media, cell phones and Internet access, and is more popular today than ever before!
