Operator Roster — W0 District
tip: type the letters A·R·R·L anywhere on this page
tip: type the letters A·R·R·L anywhere on this page
Dear friend at the key —
They will tell you contesting is only a game, and they will be wrong. What we do on these weekends is build the muscle and the ear and the patience that no classroom can teach. Every operator I respect — every one — earned that respect on the bands, in the small hours, working a faint Australian through QRN with a homebrew receiver and a leaky coax and pure stubborn will.
When you pull a voice out of the static from six thousand miles away, you have done something genuinely difficult and genuinely beautiful. You have tuned an antenna, predicted a band opening, chosen a frequency, called at the right moment, copied a callsign through interference, exchanged a number cleanly, and let the next fellow have his turn. That is not a hobby. That is a discipline. That is athletics of the most refined sort — the body still, the mind absolutely electric.
Stay on past three in the morning. The grey-line will reward you. So will the friends you have not yet met in Holland and Tasmania and the Azores. We are building, contact by contact, a network of operators who know each other's fists and signal reports and shack layouts — a continent-spanning fraternity earned one QSO at a time. There has never been anything like it.
Listen carefully. Send cleanly. Keep your log neat. And for God's sake, work the rare ones first.
— George Hutchins, W4DKR
Roanoke, Virginia · written the morning after the November '64 Sweepstakes