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 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….
 I just worked a Japan station on 21.365.00 100watts!!
 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!
 THE QUAD-COUNTY Amateur Radio Club, Inc. proudly presents our 2012 Annual Report, detailing the activities of the past 12 months in this, our 38th year. You may view or download it here:
2012 Annual Report
| CQ World Wide DX Contest (SSB) — 0000 UTC Saturday October 27 to 2359 UTC Sunday, October 28, 2012 (Friday evening at 8 until Sunday evening at 8). |
 Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work 100 countries in one weekend? Would you like to sharpen your operating skill? Do you want to try your hand at contesting and see if you have what it takes?
Well, this weekend is a great opportunity for you to do all that and more! And not only that… there’s food! Peach AB3OG has invited everyone back to Hummingbird Speedway this weekend to take part in the CQ WW DX contest. W3BC and W3TM are providing the radios and other equipment, and Peach will make the racetrack food concession available for our use.
This will be a multi-operator, multi-transmitter station, and will be pretty much like another Field Day, except everybody will be trying to work DX. That should be pretty easy, since the bands have been very good, and the solar forecast calls for continued good DX conditions, day and night. You are invited to come out and stay as long as you want. Take your turn on the air, or just sit back and watch — we’re not in it to win it, instead, our reason for doing this is to give our members and other interested hams the chance to learn how to become a successful contester.
Think of it as “On-the-Air Training.”
Our goal is to make 1 million points, but more importantly we hope to have fun, food and friendship! Please plan to take part if you can, and don’t feel obligated to do anything except have a good time!
 The annual ARRL SET took place on Saturday, October 6. Quad-County Public Service Coordinator / Jefferson County ARES EC Kevin Snyder KA3YCB set up shop at the Jefferson County EOC, and ably served as net control for the Jefferson County participants. Jerry Bosak WD3D acted as liaison, maintaining communications on HF and VHF with other counties across the Western Pennsylvania section. The American Red Cross PA Heartland Chapter participated as a joint exercise, and requested the communications services of the Quad-County ARC to set up radio links to shelters in Big Run and Brookville.
Saturday morning found club members Don Jewell KB3LES of Falls Creek and Peach Caltagarone AB3OG of Reynoldsville setting up 2-meter stations at the Red Cross shelters in Brookville and Big Run, with Greg Donahue KB3WKD and Joe Shupienis W3BC setting up in the Red Cross Headquarters in downtown DuBois. All stations set up and were able to maintain and relay communications with the Jefferson County EMA and the Red Cross HQ for the duration of the exercise.
The Western Pennsylvania Section scenario was severe weather disrupting power, transportation and communications in the section. The Red Cross disaster drill was coordinated with the WPA master plan, and included simulated tornado damage and hundreds of evacuees in the areas of Brookville and Troutville. As the mission progressed, routine and priority messages were exchanged, including requests for counts of evacuees at each shelter, requests from the shelters for supplies, EMA bulletins, and calls for additional volunteers. Red Cross officials at each shelter were able to communicate with HQ via our Amateur Radio links.
Tactical callsigns and plain-language communication techniques were used throughout the drill, and greatly facilitated accurate and effective communications. Several “problems” were simulated, both by EMA and Red Cross officials, and our amateurs were able to quickly and satisfactorily respond to each with appropriate actions. A couple “real” difficulties occurred which added an air of realism to the exercise.
This was a great opportunity to put Amateur Radio Public Service on display for the public and the served agencies. We promptly got every message through, overcame difficulties and exceeded all expectations. Red Cross officials remarked on the high degree of realism they witnessed in our communications, and praised the operating skills and knowledge of the Amateur Radio Volunteers. They further indicated their desire to equip the headquarters and shelters with antennas and radios, and hope to plan a Red Cross disaster drill in the spring, with live “victims” and official vehicles actually travelling to shelters in all four counties.
 WWe hit the road once again on Saturday, August 11; this time to set up a public demo booth at the Super 322 Drive-In Car Show between Woodland and Bigler. Lars KB3WBT, Ed KB3VWX, Don KB3LES and Joe W3BC strung a G5RV from the 50-foot peak of the screen to a similarly high tree. Lars and Don set up the radios and some portable antennas, and we hit the airwaves.
 Sam KA3USM sat in at the operating position, and Herb W3TM and guest made the rounds and pointed us to the best car displays.
Lars worked DX station after DX station and tuned higher and higher bands as the day progressed and the MUF increased. He agreed that sunspots are a good thing. The weather was very pleasant with scattered clouds and nary a drop of rain. We handed out information packets to those who stopped by, and got the chance to browse through the car show at our own pace.
Theater owner Bill Frankhouser was very appreciative of our efforts, and hopes to have us back again next year.
Photo Gallery
 GGentlemen start your… Radios! That’s right, once again, we exposed our radios in public and let people see that we’re still around. On July 21, we visited Hummingbird Speedway and put up antennas atop the knob overlooking the track. We were active on all bands from 80 meters to two, and thanks to the generosity of Racetrack General Manager “Peach” Caltagarone AB3OG, we were invited to come to play radio and stay for the races.
 The Community House on the Clearfield Fairgrounds The Quad-County ARC would be delighted to welcome you to our Field Day operation. We are located in the Community Building on the Clearfield County Fairgrounds. Here is a map and directions.
Directions:
From US-322 turn onto Weaver Street at (A).
Drive to the Fairgrounds Gate at 700 Weaver Street (B).
Say the magic words “Ham Radio” to get in free, then…
Turn left immediately and park near (C).
Our Field Day operation is in the yellow brick house immediately in front of you!
Hope to see you there!
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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!
