Hi, my name is Pat, my callsign is W3RGA. I'm a ham radio nerd. I share some information here about me and my ham radio hobby. I've been a ham for more than 20 years. Most of my friends are hams, and the hobby has greatly enriched my life.
Ham radio is a lifelong hobby that contains hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-hobbies under its umbrella. To learn more about the greatest hobby in the world visit the American Radio Relay League.
1990's: As a teenager, I was a CB operator, AM DXer, and scanner enthusiast. I would go to the local bookstore every month to get the latest issue of Popular Communications.
1999: I purchased my first PC, this started a passion for computers and networking.
2003: I was licensed as KB3JKV and was active on 2M FM and EchoLink.
2006: After a period of inactivity, a friend at work, Randy, KB3DZL encouraged me to get active in the hobby again. Thank you Randy!
2007: I got interested in weak signal VHF and started teaching myself morse code so I could work more DX on 6M.
2008: I upgraded to General and received my W3RGA vanity call.
2009: I dipped my toes into VHF Contesting.
2010: I put a 20' piece of wire out the window and made my first HF contacts.
2011: I became fascinated with RTTY, If you're using FT8 and have never tried RTTY, getting set up is trivial these days.
2014: I became involved with APRS and packet radio and played a key role in bringing APRS back to the area.
2016: I began exploring more serious HF contesting, see the Contesting section⇣ at the bottom of the page
2017: I was honored to be asked by John, K3MD to join the prestigious Frankford Radio Club.
Today: HF contesting is my focus but I still dabble in many other aspects of the hobby.
During the COVID lockdown in 2020 I decided to learn a little HTML and build a simple homepage.
Fresh out of high school in 2000, I joined the Bingaman & Son Lumber team. Over the years, I’ve worked in many roles across the company, and since 2015 I have been serving as the night-shift production supervisor at the main Kreamer headquarters.
We are a global supplier of premium hardwood products. I feel very fortunate to have been part of such a great company for more than 25 years.
My station is simple and low-maintenance with just 100 watts and a wire. 
I moved into my current Snydertown QTH in September of 2003. It's a quiet little borough in Northumberland County with fewer than 400 residents. I love living here, it's just not a good QTH for ham radio.
I didn't give ham radio any thought when I purchased this townhouse. It is located in a valley 200' below the average terrain and the backyard is only 30' wide. Luckily I have enough room to run my 125' doublet north & south.
I have an intermittent high noise-floor, if I can't hear you I apologize.
I enjoy CW, RTTY and occasionally a little SSB. When I want to torture myself you might see me on FT8...
I have all the usual awards WAS, DXCC, and WPX but I don’t really consider myself a DX'er.
I no longer send paper cards, please🙏 QSL via the ARRL's Logbook of The World.
Susquehanna Valley Amateur Radio Club.
I started running a RBN node in 2017, I enjoy using the Reverse Beacon Network and wanted to contribute to the project.
If you have a special use case, you can telnet directly to my W3RGA-# node @ w3rga.ddns.net port 7550 (w3rga.ddns.net:7550).
Otherwise it's recommended you get skimmer spots from an RBN enabled "retail" DX cluster node. Give my DX-Spider node⇣ a try.
Node is spotting (CW on all bands 630M through 6M), (RTTY on 80M, 40M, 20M, 15M and 10M) and (FT8/4 during contests).
See the latest spots 
it has sent to the Reverse Beacon Network. 
Some RBN & Skimmer resources and information:
Visit the Reverse Beacon Network website.
N6TV's great presentation CW & RTTY Skimmer and the RBN
Join RBN-OPS on Groups.io
N4ZR's RBN Blog
Try my RBN Data-Sorter for filtering and sorting RBN Raw Data Files
Have a look at my RBN Top Spotter Page
My W3RGA-1 DX cluster node is now running DX-Spider software.
Node PC is a Beelink EQR5, AMD Ryzen 5, 32GB RAM, running Proxmox. Node VM is running Ubuntu Server with 2 CPU cores and 2GB of RAM allocated to it.
Node is connected to several partner nodes and has the full CW/RTTY & FT8/FT4 RBN feed available.
Telnet to W3RGA-1 @ w3rga.ddns.net port 7373 (w3rga.ddns.net:7373).
Login: with your amateur radio call sign (unfortunately DXS does not support / portable calls at this time).
To stop some of the abuse of the DX cluster network, this node may one day require registration and a password.
You can only log in once with your call sign, but simply adding an SSID 1 through 99 will allow you to log in up to three times. (each SSID can have a different set of filters)
Logging out can be done by issuing a "BYE".
Take note, the DX-Spider filter structure is completely different than CC-Cluster or AR-Cluster.
I struggled to understand the Spider filter structure and flow until it was described by Dave, K2XR. His excellent description is below↓
1: unlike ARC6 software which required you to put all of your filter on a single line, DXS has a grand total of 20 slots for filtering the global distribution of human generated spots aka the fire hose in this article down to ONLY the exact spots that I desired for this particular operating event, then send those spots to my logging software for utilization.
2: An excellent guide to filtering spots in DXS was written by W3BG and assisted by N3RD. This document is very dated, yet it is perfectly valid today as it was when it was written. There are very few mistakes in it ( like email addresses and so forth ) and it is still a great guide.
I tried to develop the correct analogy to describe DXS filtering. This is important as it is what gives DXS a very powerful advantage over AR6 and CC-Cluster. (Pachinko, sieve and elevator) all came to mind, but I have settled on an escalator going from the tenth level of a mall to the bottom level. With a transition point on every floor. The numbering structure indicates the reverse case but I am using the numbers to indicate how many levels downwards to the bottom we have gone.
So what are these 10 levels ?
From the manual : ( section 4.1 )
Execution Sequence Slot Number Filter Rule
1 Slot0 reject/spot 0 <pattern>
2 accept/spot 0 <pattern>
3 Slot1 reject/spot 1 <pattern>
4 accept/spot 1 <pattern>
5 Slot2 reject/spot 2 <pattern>
6 accept/spot 2 <pattern>
. .
19 Slot9 reject/spot 9 <pattern>
20 accept/spot 9 <pattern>
Notice the sequence versus the slot number, also that reject comes before accept at every level.
4: You do NOT have to use all the slots, but you do need to consider the consequences of the order of your use of the slots.
5: To Reject a spot because it's pattern was a match, kicks it off the escalator
6: To Accept a spot because it's pattern was a match removes it from the escalator and sends it to your client window ( The Telnet window ) . What happens then is up to the logger.
This yields tremendous flexibility and power over single line filters.
In addition to the DXS Filtering Manual mentioned earlier.
There is an updated User Command Reference.
Have a look at the User Manual.
And the Documentation wiki as a whole is a wealth of knowledge.
I have some simple/generic filters to get you started HERE.
set/skimmer (turns on skimmer spots for ALL modes)
set/skimmer cw (turns on CW skimmer spots)
set/skimmer bea (shows BEACON skimmer spots)
set/skimmer rtt (turns on RTTY skimmer spots)
set/skimmer ft (turns on FT8 and FT4 skimmer spots)
set/skimmer cw bea rtt (you can combine modes)
unset/skimmer (turn OFF skimmer spots)
set/seeme (display ALL skimmer spot of your callsign when you call CQ)
unset/seeme (turns OFF all skimmer spot of your callsign)
DX de W3RGA-#: 14062.0 K3MD CW 29dB Q:4*+ Z:3,4,5 1744Z
Quality: Each spot sent out has a "Q" marker.
The '4' means that the my node has received four copies of this spot from different skimmers.
The '✱' means they did not agree on the frequency, the displayed frequency is the majority decision.
If a station has been spotted more than once on the same frequency, a '✚' character will be added.
Zone: The Z: is a comma separated list of all the CQ zones where this spot was heard by another skimmer.
Every skimmer spot is checked to ensure that the spotted call is in a valid format and that the prefix is valid. If either of these checks fails then the spot is ignored.
My node is also ignoring a list of 800+ busted calls that appear regularly on the RBN.
My node is using a more up to date usdbraw.gz that I build fresh every few weeks from the latest FCC database to determine City and State.
I enjoy posting to the Contest Online ScoreBoard, it adds a real-time racing element to the game.
With only a low wire, I try to keep my expectations realistic. Below↓ is a list of some of my better scores. See all my claimed scores on 3830.
| Year | Contest | Category | Score | Notes | Wallpaper | 3830 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | ARRL Digital | SO1R, Low, 8 Hour | 2,245 | Atlantic Division Record | Certificate | Report |
| 2023 | PA QSO Party | SO, Low, Mixed | 191,881 | Northumberland County Record, First Place in State | Certificate | Plaque | WAC | Report |
| 2023 | ARRL Digital | SO1R, Low, 8 Hour | 1,875 | Second Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Third Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2022 | ARRL SS CW | SOU, Low | 102,256 | Third Place Eastern Pennsylvania | Certificate | Report |
| 2022 | PA QSO Party | SO, Low, Mixed | 182,100 | Northumberland County Record, Second Place in State | Certificate | WAC | Report |
| 2022 | ARRL Digital | SO1R, Low | 4,889 | First Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Second Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2021 | ARRL 10 Meter | SOU, CW, Low | 21,760 | Second Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2021 | CQ WW RTTY | Classic, Low | 478,762 | Three Call Area Record, First Place United States | Certificate | Report |
| 2021 | CQ WPX CW | TB/Wire, Low, All | 1,175,944 | First Place Three Call Area | Certificate | Report |
| 2021 | ARRL RTTY RU | SOU, Low | 91,278 | First Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Third Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2020 | ARRL 10 Meter | SOU, CW, Low | 32,400 | Second Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Third Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2020 | ARRL RTTY RU | SO, High | 96,084 | Second Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2019 | ARRL 10 Meter | SOU, CW, Low | 4,000 | Second Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Third Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2019 | CQ WW RTTY | Classic, High | 383,625 | First Place Three Call Area, Second Place North America | Certificate | Report |
| 2019 | September NA Sprint RTTY | High | 1,449 | First Place Pennsylvania, Second Place Overall | Certificate | Report |
| 2019 | WW Digi | SO, Low, All | 38,304 | Second Place Three Call Area | Certificate | Report |
| 2019 | July NA QSO Party RTTY | SO, Low | 47,121 | Third Place Three Call Area | Certificate | Report |
| 2019 | CQ WPX RTTY | TB/Wire, Low, All | 854,700 | First Place United States, Second Place North America | Certificate | Report |
| 2018 | ARRL DX CW | SOU, Low | 35,508 | Second Place Eastern Pennsylvania | Certificate | Report |
| 2018 | CQ WPX SSB | TB/Wire, Low, All | 135,642 | First Place Three Call Area | Certificate | Report |
| 2018 | CQ WPX RTTY | TB/Wire, Low, All | 859,401 | Three Call Area Record, First Place United States, Second Place North America | Certificate | Plaque | Report |
| 2018 | ARRL RTTY RU | SO, Low | 63,624 | First Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Second Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2017 | ARRL SS Phone | SOU, Low | 58,940 | First Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Third Place Atlantic Division | Certificate | Report |
| 2017 | ARRL SS CW | SOU, Low | 66,120 | Second Place Eastern Pennsylvania | Certificate | Report |
| 2017 | CQ WW RTTY | SO, Low, All | 527,772 | First Place Three Call Area | Certificate | Report |
| 2017 | CQ WPX RTTY | TB/Wire, Low, All | 741,506 | First Place Three Call Area, Second Place United States, Third Place North America | Certificate | Report |
| 2017 | ARRL RTTY RU | SO, Low | 35,508 | Second Place Eastern Pennsylvania | Certificate | Report |
| 2016 | PA QSO Party | SO, Medium, SSB | 59,201 | First Place Northumberland County | Certificate | WAC | Report |
| 2011 | ARRL RTTY RU | SO, Low | 23,380 | Third Place Eastern Pennsylvania | Certificate | Report |
| 2009 | CQ WW VHF | Hilltopper | 1,134 | Second Place North America | Certificate | Report |
| 2009 | ARRL Jan VHF | SO, Portable | 6,965 | First Place Eastern Pennsylvania, Second Place W/VE | Certificate | Report |
Some contesting resources and information:
WA7BNM's Contest Calendar
K4RO's Contesting 101
W1DED's Contest Crew playlist
My Contesting playlist
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