PVRC WEB SITE STORY

 	PVRC Web Story - by Steve Affens K3SA PVRC Webmaster

Nothing can compete with the magic and allure of contacting someone "live" on the other side of the world via wireless CW on the low end of 40 meters! There are those of us, (yes those aging contesters and DXer's) who can remember the day when we, the radio amateurs, where the ONLY way a live contact with a VK (Australia) could take place. "HF" ionospheric communication was the only game in town. Pity the youngsters today, brought up on watching live satellite video/sound reports on the news, and email coming in from the Internet free of static crashes and QSB. They simply missed out on the romance of spinning the radio dial through the jungle of signals across the bands.

So here we are, young and old, like it or not, with a new arena for global communications: the Internet. The Net has a magic all its own. It is no surprise that we, the amateur radio community, would be one to quickly embrace the new technology. Clicking a computer mouse to request a file from the other side of the world via the Internet, has its metaphor in a key, a transmitter, an antenna, and our Internet, the beloved ionosphere.

Now, connected to the Internet, computers or servers are popping up all over the world, at an enormous rate, hosting a marvelous tapestry of files full of text, graphics, pictures, audio, and video. In April 1995, the Potomac Valley Radio Club was one of the first radio clubs (or anyone for that matter) to publish information on the electronic global village called the World Wide Web. I (K3SA) along with the help of other PVRC members and, in particular, Frank Donovan, W3LPL, stayed on top of the latest new webs as they appeared and made links to them from our page. With the help of PVRC historian at the time, W3GN, Larry Fadner, we were able to make the site much more than a giant bookmark of radio Web sites. The site is rich with the core historic documents that tell the PVRC story. Pete Smith, N4ZR helped pioneer electronic publication of the PVRC Newsletter by emailing me the files for preparation and uploading to our web. Now, Dick Wilder, K3DI, who does a meritorious job publishing our (paper) Newsletter, now reaches a world wide audience with his work via the Web. He emails the latest Newsletter to me, and I have it linked on our Web site within minutes.

This month, April 1997, we reached another milestone. Server names or Domain Names are like call signs; once assigned, they are gone...and so we registered our name as pvrc.org. Our global address (Uniform Resource Locator or URL) changed from its original http://www.access.digex.net/~k3sa/pvrc.html to http://www.pvrc.org. Anyone, anywhere in the world who is connected to the Internet, can find us this way.

Thanks to all who have sent in new URL's or have found links that have changed or faded away into cyberspace. With everyone working together, we can keep our site alive and a valuable resource to those interested in the PVRC, Amateur Radio, Contesting, and searching the Web.

73, all the best, Steve Affens K3SA