K3WW HISTORY PAGE

I WAS BORN...

in Washington DC in 1944. In my freshman year of high school I joined the Pennridge H.S. Amateur Radio Club, and received my novice license. KN3HTZ was my first call, and I soon upgraded to K3HTZ. Traffic handling, DXing, and contesting were my earliest interests as a ham. While in college I was invited to operate with W3HHK (now W3OV), a member of the Frankford Radio Club. I became a member, operated at W3WJD (now N3RS) a few times and then began operating single op in the ARRL DX, CQ WW and SS events. I managed to operate all the major contests throughout my college and dental school years.

K3HTZ (K3WW) circa 1965

In 1970, we ran a small multi multi from a converted chicken coop on a farm owned by my father. Dad found a nice hill top , and dropped some hints that it would be a better radio location. I purchased the cabin and built a multi multi station which I maintained into the early 1980's. My only single op effort from the new hill top resulted in a third place finish in the CQWW CW in 1970. That was my last serious single op effort in the 70's.

The multi op crew was anchored by KB3GJ , K3WJV and W3WPG,(who lived at my remote hilltop location for a few years). Many well known contesters visited "the hill" over the years.
Hilltop from 1 mile away

The 5 towers were 150, 150, 110, 100 and 100 feet high. It was the kind of place all my friends would bring their wives, to show that their antenna plans were trivial.

We waged war with W3GPE (now W3MM) just to try to win our township, in the Multi Multi class. We never cracked the upper echelon of big time multi multi operation, although we had a tremendous amount of fun trying.

My Junior Ops, the boys showed early promise.
W3WPG, Hal Ritchey
NQ4I, Rick being taught how to contest FRC style.
N3EC, Ed, one of the regulars in the late 70s
KW3F, Bob, another regular.
N2ATX, KA3BLP, K3WJV, part of the 1978 team.
9Y4VU, introduced to stateside contesting by KE6V, and K3WJV.

During the first half of the 70's we used the Frankford Radio Club call, W3FRY. I purchased K3WW in the first wave of choose your own call, in the mid 70's.
In the early 80's events led to closing down the multi multi and retiring from big time contesting.

In 1984 I decided to operate contests from my new home . This is the same location I began operating from in 1959. My family and office were moved from a downtown location, about 1 mile, to my current location. I put up a TH6 at 55 feet and a 402BA above it at 65 feet, and 80 meter vertical with base loading for 160, and decided to make some points for the FRC, and not get so serious about contesting. Unfortunately I made the top 10 single op list in the CQWW CW contest the first time, after many years as a part of multi op efforts. This led to little refinements in the station, and with the creation of the Single Operator Assisted category, my activity level seemed to increase.

In the past decades I have been a member of the CQ-WW Contest Committee, helping with log checking chores, and more recently a member of the ARRL Contest Advisory Committee. I continue to make refinements to the station, mostly to make Single Op 2 Radio a possibility during contests. I still prefer the Single Op Assisted category and have continued to do OK as I contest into my 70's with over 60 years of continuous Amateur Radio activity.

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Charles Fulp k3ww@fast.net