Ham Radio – A contact sport

My business trip to Connecticut had a few setbacks this week (delays, meetings canceled, etc.). With some extra time on my hands, I decided to head ~40 minutes east to Newington and take the tour of the ARRL Headquarters. I thought it would be a great way to spend a few hours. As it turns out, I was right – the tour was an afternoon well spent. I highly recommend taking the ARRL HQ tour if you are in Connecticut and have a chance.

The staff was very friendly from the time I walked in the front door. I arrived just in time for the 2pm tour. Timing is everything as I managed to come at a time when I was the only visitor. This meant that that my friendly tour guide, Bob Allison, WB1GCM could go as fast or slow as I wanted. Bob really knew his ham radio history and took his volunteer duty seriously.

Truth be told I could have spent a much longer time with poor Bob on the tour. I’m a bit of a history nut and especially appreciate radio history, I’ve been a ham since 1980 and have played with almost every facet of ham radio (HF, VHF, SSB, RTTY, CW, contesting, DXing, clubs/volunteering, ARES, the VE program… you name it). Anyway, Bob told me up-front that I could really set the pace – but if I wanted to get any time in at W1AW then we couldn’t drag our feet too much.

Bob has been a ham for over 30 years and is well equipped as a tour guide. Friendly, willing to adapt the tour to my interests and time, answered questions on his feet, … I’m sure the league is grateful to have guys like Bob volunteering.

Even though I wanted to make sure I had some time to get on the air at W1AW, we managed to see all the pieces of HQ that make the league work. We even ran into Dave Sumner, K1ZZ, Chief Executive Officer, Executive Vice President, and Secretary of the American Radio Relay League. Dave was kind enough to chat a few minutes despite his busy schedule (currently preparing for the national convention in Huntsville next weekend).

One of our first stops was to see the QSL/awards processing staff. Having been on the other end of a call for help with these folks during a LOTW certificate crisis, it was good to put a face with someone who had bailed me out via email. Bob was interested to know if I had been using LOTW (I have) and what I thought about it. I told him I was a LOTW advocate and have been really impressed with the system as a whole. What will make LOTW really fly, in my opinion, is when software developers automate the process as much as possible (uploads, reporting, etc.). I then told Bob about my own PocketPC PDA ham radio logbook software, MobileLog, and how I was currently interfacing it with DXLabs DXKeeper. That way, MobileLog users will be able to sync their PDA to DXKeeper which can then sync to LOTW. That’s the plan anyway.

Moving on, Bob showed me the various departments and the staff all took time to say hello. We made some stops to look at some boat anchors… this made me wonder if the janitor notices drool puddles in front of the display cases. A Collins 75-A4 SN#0001 (?) was featured in one case. I can’t imagine what that would fetch on eBay – along with some other items that are simply priceless.

Upstairs we visited the ARRL Outgoing QSL buro. It was smaller than I thought it might be… tucked away in a room in the back of the building these slots have seen more than 500,000 QSL cards so far in 2007 (and it’s only August!).

After seeing the test lab (and discussing BPL and assorted topics with Ed Hare, W1RFI), we visited the graphics folks, the staff station, sales/advertising, and some other exhibits. Then it was time to stop by W1AW and get on the air!

Bob handed me off to Joe Carcia, NJ1Q who introduced me to this fabulous station. Stocked with equipment from several major manufacturers – and donations from guys like Joe Walsh (WB6ACU) and Bob Heil (K9EID) – this station rocks! In just a few minutes, Joe had me up and running on 20 meters. I was thinking about CW – but instead backed out and ran SSB for ~45 minutes (until W1AW went into bulletin mode). It was a blast, but the time went fast.

Despite the poor propagation conditions, I worked into europe, the south and west – including a few fellow Iowans. I made sure to work some zeros (it seems to me that zeros are often left out).

I have to say that my afternoon at ARRL HQ exceeded my expectations. The staff, volunteers and facility are excellent and they represent the hobby very well.