Jul 27, 2018 3 min read

At 7 p.m. July 7, the Whiskey Rebellion Festival was in full swing as a Cajun music group fiddled out tunes for a free concert on Main Street in Washington. Instead of clapping along in the gathered crowd, Kathleen Briggs was chatting with people across the nation about the festival and its history – all while sitting in her Washington home.

Briggs is a member of Washington Amateur Communications, a local club that unites amateur radio operators – or “hams” – in the area and introduces interested individuals to the hobby through classes and public demonstrations. For the past five years, the organization has put on a special broadcast for the Whiskey Rebellion Festival. This year, well over 1,000 hams around the world made contact with participating operators using the event’s call sign, W3R.

Call signs are codes that are used to identify broadcasters on the air. Hams receive their own call signs from the Federal Communications Commission when they become licensed to operate amateur radios – Briggs’ is KC3HBO – and can receive permission from the commission to use another code when transmitting for a special event.

WACOM President Bill Steffey said at least seven club members were granted permission to use the call sign W3R from July 3 to 15 to broadcast for Whiskey 3 Radio. Some operators made contacts with hams as far away as Australia and New Zealand.

When a W3R operator made contact on air with another ham radio operator, they were instructed to jot down the transmitter’s call sign, name and location in a log book so that WACOM could track the broadcast’s reach. Operators then directed their fellow hams to visit the event’s web page, which included more information about the broadcast and the history of the Whiskey Rebellion. By July 15, the web page had racked up more than 5,000 views.

While some of the hams who connected with Briggs had questions about the festival, many were just interested in making contact. Amateur radio operators often collect special certificates, called “QSL cards,” that affirm their connections with other transmitters. These cards are often decorated to be unique to its special event or operator – hams who made contact with the W3R broadcast could order one emblazoned with the Whiskey Rebellion Festival’s logo and an illustration of George Washington holding a radio.

Briggs collects QSL cards herself and has made contacts with hams across the nation and in 12 different countries. She also distributes her own QSL card, which she decorated with images of her three beloved dogs and her call sign.

Briggs and her husband were sparked to pick up ham radio after becoming stranded overnight on an uninhabited island when their boat had mechanical issues while floating on a lake in Maine. The couple exhausted their supply of flares and flags, had no cell signal and were unable to make contact with their marine radio, but managed to attract the attention of a group of fishermen the following morning, who towed their boat back to shore.

The harrowing experience encouraged the couple to explore other methods of communication that could be used in emergency, and they became licensed ham radio operators in 2016. Now, Briggs serves as WACOM’s treasurer, a position she described as very rewarding. Ham radio is “a great opportunity to be able to reach out and speak to someone across the globe,” she said.