Yesterday Once More
Brian D. Smith, W9IND
Lightning strikes a ham 40 years after he hears the thunder.
They say Amateur Radio is a lifelong hobby and, as I’ve often been reminded, the adage especially applies to QSLing. Once you’ve worked a station, there’s no statute of limitations on verifying the contact. I’ve sent and received cards from contacts that occurred two decades earlier and never given the matter a second thought.
The same spirit of “never too late” — and okay, a sense of whimsy — inspired me to test this custom in a different aspect of Amateur Radio: I chased an award that was so old, it didn’t even exist anymore.
Big Thunder in the Sky
My story begins back in August 1971, when I earned my first Novice license (WN9ICB) at the age of 15. By the second month of my two nonrenewable years, I had randomly worked two members of the Big Thunder Amateur Radio Club in Illinois. This, I discovered, only after receiving a QSL card from the second station, WB9FGM, whose operator (“Andi” Anderson) informed me that I needed contacts with three BTARC members to qualify for the club award. He listed other stations in the club and since I’d already worked one of them (WN9ERZ), I realized I was already two-thirds of the way there.
The prospect of earning an operating award excited a newbie like me, particularly since my flexibility was hampered by the FCC restrictions that Novices use only crystal-controlled transmitters with a maximum input of 75 W. With only a few 40 meter rocks at my disposal, I had little prospect of achieving DXCC or WAC, but with 22 months to go, I figured I had decent prospects of working another qualifying station from Illinois. Unfortunately, I never pulled it off and my certificate safari ended one step short of my quarry.
Then my license expired, college beckoned and I didn’t return to ham radio for 9 years. Even so, I hung on to my QSL collection and not long ago, while in the process of moving, I found an old box containing my WN9ICB cards.
Thumbing through them, I stopped cold at the WB9FGM QSL, which reminded me of my long-abandoned pursuit of the Big Thunder award. A smile slowly crossed my lips. “Hmm,” I wondered, “If you can still get QSL cards decades later, what about certificates? What if it’s not too late to earn my BTARC award?”
Of course, I had a few questions to answer:
• Does the Big Thunder Amateur Radio Club still exist?
• Is it active?
• Is its old award still available?
Hunting the Big Thunder
An online search answered my first question: Yes, Virginia, there was a BTARC and it even had an e-mail address. A response from club member Paul Larsen, KB9MCX, confirmed that the group remained active.
Problem was, the club hadn’t presented a certificate since — well, probably the ‘70s. None of the current members knew for sure, since none of them could even remember what the award looked like, let alone where they might find a copy. It seemed my quest had again fallen just short of the goal.
But by now, BTARC members were enjoying the game as much as I was. After all, it’s not every day that someone cares enough about your radio club to track it down decades later. And one day, to my delight, I received an e-mail from Paul that said, “Our club had quite a chuckle with the fact that I actually found an original certificate in an old scrapbook. I have the action to re-create the certificate…all we need is for you to make contact with someone in our membership to satisfy the requirement of three contacts.”
That was all I needed to hear. Paul and I worked out a schedule and I decided to make the contact a win-win proposition. During that coming weekend, one of my fellow club members was operating special event station W9ISF in commemoration of the Indiana State Fair’s 150th anniversary. So I figured that as soon as I nailed down my third Big Thunder contact, I’d sign off as W9IND, put on my W9ISF hat and hand out a signal report that would qualify Paul for a special QSL of his own.
Wallpaper in the Bag
The appointed hour came and, sure enough, Paul appeared on frequency, accompanied by a bonus club contact, Van Johnson, KH6UX/W9. I had a nice chat with both of them and they congratulated me on the completion of a goal that had eluded me since I was a teenage Novice. Then I returned the favor as W9ISF.
My Big Thunder certificate arrived 2 weeks later. Tearing open the manila envelope, I beheld the brown “wallpaper,” noticed my current call sign alongside my 1971 call on the recipient line (“W9IND/WN9ICB”) and grinned all the way back to the house.
Certainly I’ve earned other, more prestigious Amateur Radio certificates since my WN9ICB days, but I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun qualifying for one. As for the BTARC, my ‘70s nostalgia trip prompted club members to reinstate their long-discontinued club certificate.
You, too, can qualify for it, Mr Paper Chaser. And if the notion of working three Illinois stations sounds too easy to bother with, ask yourself this: How many Amateur Radio awards do you know of that take nearly 40 years to achieve?
Brian D. Smith, W9IND, an ARRL member, was first licensed in 1971. His radio interest began with listening to shortwave broadcasts and he learned the Morse code by copying the maritime CW stations. He held his first Novice license till it expired in 1973.
In 1982, as a reporter for a local paper he was assigned to cover a local club's Field Day operation and caught the radio bug again. He passed his Novice test and this time his General and Extra class licenses followed in short order.
Brian’s main interests are DXing, contesting and special events. He is a frequent operator at W9IMS, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway ARC’s special event station and he operated at W87PAX, the 1987 Pan American Games special event.
When he turns off the rig Brian’s career in Journalism has taken him from reporter to editor to award winning freelancer. He can be reached at 4664 Water’s Edge Wy, Greenwood, IN 46143.
All photos by the author.
