The Delaware Valley Radio Association hopes to be heard loud and clear during events scheduled during the month of August.
Established in 1930, the all-volunteer amateur station based in Ewing is one of the oldest in the nation and has approximately 150 members.
First up is a “Fox hunt” event, set to beheld on Saturday, Aug. 5.
In a fox hunt—also known as transmitter hunting, bunny hunting and bunny chasing—the participants use radio direction finding techniques to locate one or more radio transmitters hidden within a designated search area.
The DVRA holds several fox hunts during the course of the year. The August session is scheduled to start at 9 a.m., and hunts are usually done by noon.
The starting point for this hunt is the Chapin School south parking lot located at 4101 Princeton Pike in Princeton.
Also this month is a picnic/open house on Sunday, Aug. 13. More information on the event is set to be posted on the club’s website atw2zq.com.
The August events offer an opportunity for area residents to see the club in action and consider signing up.
On a recent afternoon at the group’s headquarters — a World War II-era U.S. Navy radio shack right off U.S. 295 — club president Bob Bowden and former president Dom DiClementi share the club’s past and present.
Playfully introducing themselves with their official ham names — respectively KB3BB and N3DD — the two beam-in on one of the most obvious question about the group that goes by the ham name W2ZQ: “What’s the ‘ham’ stand for?”
“It is an unflattering fact that we don’t know,” says Bowden. “No one really knows.”
That fact is made clear when they reference a list of unsupported theories found on a variety of radio history websites.
Nevertheless, ham has become synonymous with amateur radio and the class of people communicating on the same frequency as professionals.
But what the duo do know is that ham radio started around 1917 and that soon after people began to create radio clubs in geographic areas.
DVRA got its start in 1930 when former World War I naval radio operator Ed Raiser brought local ham operators together. Originally meeting and incorporating in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, the club held meetings in Trenton and eventually the “Wireless Hill” site in the 1940s.
“Not many clubs have a facility like this,” says DiClementi about the vintage masonry structure with banks of new equipment inside and antennas of various heights outside.
When the war ended, the property was deeded to Mercer County, which, in turn, developed a long-term agreement with nonprofit DVRA.
The club pays for utilities, upkeep, and securing equipment, including a grant to install a five-meter dish to bounce radio beams from space.
“This building was quite run down, but (DiClementi) was the leader who turned the club around,” says Bowden.
That included improving the building to appeal to its members and attract new ones.
If numbers prove anything, it was a winning move. Over the past several years, membership has jumped from 30 to 150.
DiClementi says part of the attraction is the club’s “wide footprint” — that includes the headquarters and its adjacent radio towers seen from Interstate 95, a transmitter on the towering Bakers Basin antenna, and its monthly meeting space at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church in Ewing.
“It’s not like the average ham operators in their home,” DiClementi says. “They don’t have 100-foot towers. If you want to operate state-of-the-art equipment, this is where you come.”
Since the club is also one of the sites approved by the 109-year-old AARL, the Amateur Radio Relay League, which is the national association for amateur radio, people also come to get help in obtaining the FCC license to broadcast.
Bowden says the big appeal for ham radio operators is its emergency communication aspect and readily points out that the ham operators became the eyes and ears of Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria swept the island in 2017.
Another appeal is members finding the opportunity to communicate with people around the world.
Bowden and DiClementi, both residents of Lower Makefield, Pennsylvania, say that the first thing a person has to do to become a ham radio broadcaster is to take and pass a mandatory FCC test to get on the air. The cost is $15.
And while a person doesn’t need to join DVRA to do so, the annual $50 membership connects beginners with experienced operators who can share information on equipment and expenses.
But before anything else, says DiClementi, a ham beginner needs to ask, “What do I want to do with the hobby? The interest dictates the equipment. And the budget should dictate whether to get used or new equipment.”
That said, he and Bowden say a new member could get on the air with a $30 backyard short-range walkie-talkie-like device or set up a home station with wire antennae for $200. Additionally, DVRA membership for the first year is free.
“Basically, it isn’t much money to get into the hobby,” says Bowden, who got into ham radio in Long Island, New York, and recalls its “magical allure — just the idea of communicating with people through the air.”
His interest was helped by his father, whose World War II military work involved working on radios in the United Kingdom.
DiClementi’s story is similar. He was a South Philadelphia kid whose Uncle Joe was a World War II “communications guy” who worked in television repair.
“There are so many facets to this hobby,” says DiClementi. “It doesn’t lose its magic. We talk to people by bouncing beams off the moon.”
In fact, moon bouncing is part of the regular activities
“On a weekly basis, we run an emergency network where everybody checks their equipment through an emergency report,” says Bowden. “And we work with the Boy Scouts earning merit badges (in radio).”
“We also do social stuff, public service events, like the New Jersey Triathlon (in Mercer County Park) and relay information” to help with bicycle repairs.
They also offer workshops as stand-alone events, special events like a “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, and live and Zoom guest-speaker presentations at their monthly meetings.
Elaborating on Zoom and digital technology, Bowden says, the “technology that was making us obsolete is expanding our membership.”
The two say club membership is a balance of New Jersey and Pennsylvania residents.
While core of the group is made up of older men of European descent, the two say that there has been a noticeable increase of women (about 8 percent), people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, and youth.
Some of that change is related to the club’s connection to educational institutions, such as The College of New Jersey and its mutual interest in radio astronomy.
And promotional materials related to radio astronomy note the involvement of one of the club’s members, Nobel laureate and retired Princeton University astrophysicist Joe Taylor.
“The goal for us is to increase diversity, especially with young people,” says Bowden. “They get involved with the hobby and then get involved in STEM projects.”
However, they can just be there to enjoy broadcasting and learning. “Fifty percent or our club members are not technicians or engineers,” says Bowden, who worked with marketing and statistics at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
While Bowden and DiClementi’s upbeat words suggest marketing hype, their claims have been matched by some upbeat recognition.
During the recent Hamvention, the self-described world’s largest gathering of amateur radio enthusiasts, DVRA was cited the 2023 Club of the Year.
The reasons? The club’s tripling of membership, variety of activities for both members and community, and its “regular schedule when members and visitors use state-of-the-art equipment to get on the air and communicate with other hams around the world.”
“It’s a very prestigious honor and formal recognition of all we’ve accomplished as a club in recent years,” says Bowden in a formal statement. “It’s a real testament to the dedication and enthusiasm of our membership, who made the award possible.”
The club will continue using that enthusiasm to power two upcoming events.
The first, of course, is Field Day. Although the official 24-hour event highlighting Cold War era communication drills starts on June 24, and continues through June 25, the free public session is set for Saturday, June 24, from 2 to 7 p.m., at the Wireless Hill station, 798 Bear Tavern Road in West Trenton.
“We’re going to have three transmitters using 100 watts, and we’re going to talk to people all over the world,” says Bowden.
The other is the Saturday, July 8, “Parks on the Air” event at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania. Another national effort, the event has been likened to a ham sporting activity where clubs set up in public parks and invite the community to watch them try to use radio signals to hunt down other clubs in parks across the nation.
Looking at the club and ham radio, Bowden says, “Ten years ago, you could criticize this hobby as a bunch of dinosaurs. But now, technology has advanced to the point where we have leading edge technology. More than half a billion people are involved (with ham radio). It has become a dynamic hobby again.”
Former president Dom DiClementi.,
Delaware Valley Radio Association members Jack Tatar, K2WLD, left, and Greg Mauro, K3EA, operating a temporary amateur radio station at the club's 2022 Field Day event.,
