We Are Quad-County

WWE ARE The Quad-County Amateur Radio Club, an ARRL Special Service Club serving Radio Amateurs in Clearfield, Jefferson, Elk and Cameron Counties, and communities in the eleven immediately surrounding counties in central Pennsylvania since 1975. We are proud of our rich history; we are active today, and we are ready to face the challenges of the future.

The overarching concepts of our club are Service and Fraternity. We welcome all Radio Amateurs, and everyone interested in Amateur Radio, Public Service, communications and electronics throughout our four-county area. In the vision of our founder, Joe Shupienis (W3BC), the best way to maintain a healthy club is maintaining a large enough membership to ensure worthwhile activities, and in our rural area the way to achieve sufficient numbers is to incorporate a large geographic area. This is why we serve four counties. In spite of the large distances, we’ve made it work. We note with satisfaction our experience that people will drive 50 miles and more to a club activity… if it’s worth the trip!

Services Offered

As a Special Service Club, we actively seek to present amateur radio in a favorable public light, and welcome new amateurs to the hobby by teaching licensing classes and conducting regular Volunteer Exam sessions. We are establishing a Local Mentor program to bring new and experienced hams in each of our communities together for the good of everyone involved. During floods, blizzards, tornadoes and transportation accidents, we are there, offering our communications skills, equipment and effort to help those in need. We routinely offer communications support at such functions as parades, races and other public gatherings.

We sponsor several wide-coverage repeaters from atop the backbone of the Allegheny Mountains, linking Amateur communities on both eastern and western sides of the Eastern Continental Divide. Our legendary Sunday Evening Quad-County FM Net has been on the air weekly since 1975, making it the oldest net in continuous existence in the area we serve.

From the first issue distributed at our very first meeting in 1975, we continue to publish the award-winning newsletter, The Parasitic Emission every month. Keeping up with the times, it is now a high-quality, graphic-intense, full-color PDF electronic magazine. It is emailed to all known hams in our area free of charge, and includes news, meeting information, and directories of club officers, nets and repeaters for seven clubs from Potter to Cambria County. Our editorial policy is to publish only original material, and not to copy syndicated content the reader has already seen everywhere else. Featured content includes original technical, operating, opinion and entertaining articles from a number of authors throughout our area, including published QST and CQ Magazine authors. All recent issues are available for download, and all available back issues are being scanned and made available as searchable PDF files. This is an ongoing project, and is important because we are preserving a good deal of our rich history for posterity.

National Affiliation

We became an Affiliated Club of the American Radio Relay League in 1978, and support the ARRL, The National Association For Amateur Radio™. Our Volunteer Examiner team is coordinated by the ARRL VEC. In 1985 we became an ARRL Special Service Club, and we renewed our SSC status in 2011. The ARRL defines Special Service Clubs in these words: “Truly special Amateur Radio clubs are well balanced in their programs for serving the community, developing club members’ Amateur Radio skills and social activities, striving each year to build on their successes to improve their effectiveness… Being an SSC should mean that members have certain skills, that the club as a group has the ability to improve service inside and outside the Amateur Radio community, and that it does so when needed.”

Current Activities

We operate amateur radio station, N3QC with HF, VHF and UHF capability. We participate in ARRL Field Day from public locations, and set up a special station to permit visitors to experience Amateur Radio for themselves, and talk over the air with distant stations. We hold monthly meetings, and we do our best to provide an interesting Amateur Radio program for our members at each meeting. Refreshments are served, and there is time to socialize after each meeting. We also have an informal Saturday Breakfast session each month. To round out our social calendar, we host an annual Picnic and a Christmas Dinner.

We re-instituted our traditional Spring Banquet, as a regular event, and arrange for high-level featured speakers. We sponsored a popular annual Swap Meet in the past, and we are considering how we can continue this popular event. At other times throughout the year, we set up special event stations at public events, and invite the public to experience today’s amateur radio.

We are currently offering a Technician license preparation class, and are in the planning stages for offering upgrade classes to General and Extra Class licenses. We have appointed Public Service, Public Information, Technology, Program, Activity and Membership Officers, several of whom have also been officially appointed by the WPA ARRL Section Manager to extend their services to other local clubs. We are in search of an Official Emergency Station, a Traffic Manager and a Youth Activities Coordinator.

Community Involvement

The Quad-County Amateur Radio Club actively takes part in community affairs. We partner with other community organizations to further our mutual public service activities, and to expand our service role in the various communities we serve. We have signed a Statement of Cooperation with the PA Heartland Chapter of The American Red Cross, in joint support of each other’s Public Service activities. We are developing cooperative educational projects with the DuBois Campus of Penn State, and are exploring more ways to be of service to our communities.

We believe we can attain our goal of providing the level of service to the amateur community commonly found only in “Big-City Clubs” right here in our own neck of the woods! With the help of every active amateur in our 15-county extended service area, we can reach—and exceed—that goal!

We are The Quad-County Amateur Radio Club. We are an active, service-oriented club serving the communities and Radio Amateurs in a 15-county area. Our goal is to make every Quad-County activity worth your trip, every time! We invite you to join us.