via the ARRL: Lost and Found: EME WAC Award Application

Forty-eight years ago, the Pennsylvania-based Mt. Airy VHF Radio Club “Pack Rats” were experimenting with the latest amateur radio technology, Earth – Moon – Earth (EME), which became known simply as moonbounce.

While the radio equipment was pretty standard for the day, EME was not an easy technology. Moonbounce contacts required big antennas and kilowatt transmitters.

“There were a number of dedicated amateur operators in a dozen or so countries that had assembled stations capable of making the ultimate long-distance QSO with one goal in mind – to be the first to work all six populated continents on the globe, the Worked All Continents (WAC) award,” said club president Phil Miguelez, WA3NUF.

The Pack Rats were early experimenters of EME communications. Thanks to a donation of a 20-foot stressed dish antenna by Al Katz, K2UYH (SK), an EME station was assembled at a rural sheep barn in Revere, Pennsylvania. The station, W3CCX/3, began making EME contacts but the major obstacle to obtaining the WAC award was the lack of an EME station on 432 MHz on the South American continent.

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