| Skyview Radio Society celebrates 50 years of community service (July 10) |
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When Bob King and Bill Bell became rebels in 1959, they never dreamed of creating a 50-year community service legacy in the Alle-Kiski Valley.
Bell, 80, of Springdale and King, 79, of Washington Township, are ham radio operators and two of the three surviving charter members of the Skyview Radio Society. The club marked its 50th anniversary Saturday with its 85 members contacting other ham operators around the world and a picnic on the club's property along Turkey Ridge Road. "We had hopes that we had a future," King said of the members who broke away from the Allegheny-Kiski Amateur Radio Association to form Skyview. That happened during the winter of 1959 when the Allegheny-Kiski group heatedly debated building a clubhouse. The idea was rejected and that prompted a handful of members to break away. "The main reason was they never had a main meeting place," Bell said. "We were always shuffling back and forth from one place to another." He said they had a chance to buy the 2 1/2-acre property where the clubhouse sits for $400 and the dozen or so men each pitched in $100. By the fall of 1960, the Skyview clubhouse was built with each founder contributing skills, connections and talents from electrical wiring to carpentry, to make it a reality. "We just decided to do something, then do something more and it became something big," Bell said. Not low tech Through the years hundreds of ham radio operators became part of Skyview as it linked the Alle-Kiski Valley with points around the world and, in the process, created a lot of fun for themselves. That included some of the group from which Skyview's charter members broke away. "They saw the light," King said with a smile. In the years since Skyview formed, the ways ham radio operators communicate has expanded from voice and Morse code on crystal sets to sophisticated digital and satellite equipment. Bob Bastone of East Deer, the club's radio officer, said a lot of people don't realize the value of ham radio and think it is obsolete in today's world of computers and cell phones. "What bugs me is a lot of people consider ham radio to be low tech," Bastone said. "They say, 'We have the Internet, we don't need ham radio', but ham radio actually incorporates the Internet." Skyview members point out that cell phones rely on towers with electrical links and the Internet requires computers and servers which require electrical power to operate. But, ham radio operates on battery power independent of an electrical grid, they said. Hams can operate from anywhere using a radio, a battery and an antenna that can be a length of wire, they said. "Everything is battery powered," said John Rodgers of Butler, the regional section manager for the American Amateur Radio League, the governing body for hams. "You can put your entire emergency station in a backpack." "Ham radio is just so simple in its concept," said Larry Keller of Murrysville, Skyview's outgoing board chairman. "It's completely decentralized. It's like trying to kill bees with a rifle." Emergency response Every week, members gather at the clubhouse to contact fellow ham operators around the world, participate in contests and "field days", drills that test ham operators' capabilities during emergencies. Those capabilities also have been put to the real test during storms, floods and events such as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "When Flight 427 went down, there was a lot of ham support for that," Keller said. Dave Kleber of O'Hara, who is Skyview's digital specialist, was part of that support. Kleber said he went to the clubhouse and checked to see if any agencies needed help with the operations in Somerset County and found that the Salvation Army did. He loaded his equipment into his car and went to Shanksville where he spent the next 12 hours fielding and relaying messages for the Salvation Army that could not be handled through regular emergency frequencies. "It was mostly like logistical stuff," Kleber said. "That's usually the stuff that falls off the plate in an emergency." Keller and Rodgers said ham operators were invaluable to operations in New York during 9-11 since cell phone traffic in and out of the city was jammed by an overwhelming call volume. They said hams were involved in relaying a lot of health and welfare information on people who were at the World Trade Center that was not getting out otherwise. "When all else fails, we turn to these guys," Rodgers said. Exceptional service When they are not on the air, Skyview members can be found building antennae and radio sets, doing chores to maintain the clubhouse and grounds, or holding classes for aspiring hams. There is also plenty of cooking out and friendly needling which Keller displayed as King discussed handling radio traffic for three days at Johnstown during the 1977 flood. "You handled traffic for the French and Indian War too, didn't you," a grinning Keller said to King. "They used smoke signals, right?" In addition to emergencies, Skyview's members provide communications services for events like the Pittsburgh Marathon, the Vintage Grand Prix, the Race for the Cure, and a wide variety of parades in the region, all on a volunteer basis. Club members are now looking to Skyview's next 50 years and are hoping to get more young interested in ham radios and the club. "It's tough to get young people interested," King said, adding that they seem to be involved in so many activities. Members said that Skyview has reached out to schools, offering to provide demonstrations for middle and high school students but with little success. They also plan to reach out more to local municipalities and emergency service agencies to inform them about how the club can help in emergencies. The Skyview clubhouse and that of another ham operators club in Elwood City are the only two ham club locations that have been designated as official emergency stations in Western Pennsylvania. Rodgers, who makes those designations, said that is rare. "It's not a normal thing to use clubs like this, it's usually individuals," Rodgers said. "But these clubs provide such exceptional service, I made the designation." |
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