[PaQSO] Historic QCWA Event Next Weekend

[TwelveVDC--- via PaQSO]

Nearly 2 years in the making, an On-The-Air event of gargantuan proportions will take place next weekend, Saturday and Sunday October 11 & 12.

Please bear with me as I explain its great significance to the Quarter Century Wireless Association.

The annual Pennsylvania QSO Party is one of the largest, best organized. and most prestigious state Party's there is.

QCWA Chapter 17 (Allentown - Bethlehem) has been chosen to be the Party's Special Event Bonus Station for 2014, and boy oh boy, are we celebrating in Grand Style!

First, Chapter 17 just celebrated its 50th Year of Charter, and we are recognizing our outgrowth Sister Chapter's 224 Wyoming Valley's very own 1st anniversary!

Our immediate Past President, Ray Bilger, W3TDF just turned 90 years old this June and celebrated by erecting and climbing a 30' tower with a tribander on Field Day at the local Club's site and later with his 6 kids, 20 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren, and 4 great-great-grandchildren!

Affectionately called, "The Grump," two years ago Ray decided to get active on EME Moonbounce and has a few dozen countries in the bag. Ray's contesting exploits are positively legendary. He holds or has held more PAQSO records than anyone. 

Chapter 17 is honored to employ "The Grump's" call, W3TDF as the Official Callsign of the Special Event Bonus Station for the entire weekend. Operating from 10 separate Pennsylvania Counties, (each sporting a different county abbreviation suffix) every contact on any mode with any of the 10 designated W3TDF stations is each worth 200 extra bonus points, (as opposed to 1 pt per phone contact, and 2 pts per CW or digital with other contestants, on every single band from 160-2m.)

There's more...

100 years ago in 1914, one of QCWA'S most colorful Founders, talented illustrator and budding cartoonist Otto Eppers, W2EA left Brooklyn and settled in Clearfield, PA. He made a meager living shining shoes in the basement barbershop of the very swanky 120 room Dimeling Hotel in bustling downtown Clearfield.

After a brief WWI hitch with the Army Signal Corp, Eppers returned to Clearfield to marry and raise a family while saving for formal instruction and hoping to be discovered as a talented artist. In the 1920s and 30s, he maintained a ham radio apparatus from the barbershop, (W8DIK) and is credited with saving lives and property by broadcasting the location of approaching floods during a great storm in 1936 to local residents listening on their receivers from observations made from the roof of the 7-story building.

http://www.arrl.org/otto-eppers-making-waves

Chapter 17 has secured special permission from the current owners to honor Eppers' centennial presence this weekend only, with an Amateur Radio station performing as a PAQSO Bonus Station from the roof of the Dimeling Hotel. Built in 1904, it is today a private adult residence, and is on the National Historic Register.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimeling_Hotel

Negotiating permission from the principals was a spectacularly uncertain achievement. With no familiarity of Amateur Radio, and no desire for publicity, our proposal was not met with enthusiasm until we shared the story of Eppers. Deeply proud of the landmarks history, we confirmed for the staff what were held as rumors; the existence of the Barbershop, the shoeshine consortium, and the taxi stand.

My Co-chair for this event, Mark / NK8Q and I were given unrestricted access to find and show proof of the department services, and we discovered them deep in the basement's bowels of what is today a windowless maintenance shop that has an exclusive stairwell leading directly from the street level exterior.

The Callsign of this particular Bonus Station will be, "W3TDF/CLE." ONLY contacts made with W3TDF/CLE and are righteously logged will qualify for a specially recreated QSL Card to commemorate the event, with an appropriate nod to both "The Grump," and 1947 QCWA Founder Otto Eppers at the Dimeling Hotel.

**Send qualifying cards strictly with a SASE direct to NL7XM by Dec. 15.** A green stamp to offset printing and conditionally purchased liability insurance costs to arrange this production would be most welcome. Cards will not be printed and mailed until after the deadline establishes how many are required.

The contest begins on Saturday at 1600 UTC and runs until 0500 UTC, starting again on Sunday morning at 1300 UTC and wrapping up at 2200 UTC.

I will spot the frequency here on the Members forum once we are on the air.

This is truly a "once-in-our-lifetime" event. Be a part of history and work us next weekend.

47,

Pete "The Greek" / NL7XM
National Director QCWA, and

Mark / NK8Q
Co Chairs for the 2014 PAQSO
Special Event Bonus Station