2020 is broadcast pioneer KDKA’s 100th anniversary. To celebrate this great milestone there will be a month-long special event operation put on by multiple Western PA clubs! Look for special callsigns K3A, K3D and K3K. Also, look for special callsign W8XK – KDKA’s callsign before it was KDKA! There will be portable operations from Saxonburg, where it all started. Operators will be operating right next to one of the original tower piers! There are great special QSL cards and a certificate if you work all four callsigns. QSL information will be posted on the respective callsign QRZ pages.
The special event stations will be on the air from November 1 thru November 30, 2020. Frank Conrad's amateur callsign was 8XK, later assigned the "special amateur" callsign of 8ZZ, eventually to become KDKA. Detailed history is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDKA_(AM)
Wow! So looking forward to this event. Congratulations KDKA! I was first licensed as a novice in 1974 and lived just east of Pittsburgh, grew up listening to Bob Prince call the Pirates games during the late 60s and early 70s on a 6-transistor radio. Wonderful!
from kittanning. as a kid listened to ? rege kordig and his space friends the kordikrons. it was hilarious. seems each morning the tiny space ship landed briefly on his window sill. i still laugh sick thinking of him... btw read the history, its a fun , interesting read...
I grew up in Butler, PA and remember listening to the Pirate's games on KDKA sitting on my Uncle Chuck's front porch.
What great memories I have listening to Bob Prince (the Hoover man) call the Pirates games. Lived in Port Vue for 18 years.
I listened to clear channel KDKA as a boy in Oklahoma during the 1960's.It was a very strong signal at night on 1020. Congratulations,KDKA,on 100 years !
Congratulations with a smile of remembrance to KDKA. As a boy I lived with my Grandparents in the 50's. Almost every night Grandma had the old Philco humming to Ed and Wendy King on a broadcast called Party Line.
From the late '50s and early '60s, I remember disc jockeys Art Pallan, Bob Tracey, and Clark Race. "Party Line" with Ed and Wendy King, Pirate broadcasts with Bob Prince ("The Gunner") and Jim Woods ("The Possum"), and news reports with Mike Levine "on the scene". Probably the most memorable was the early morning "Cordic & Company", with Rege, and characters Omicron, Brunhilda, Carmen Monoxide, Louie the garbageman, and others, sponsored by "Olde Frothingslosh, the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom. Oh my gosh! It's Frothingslosh!". Cordic & Company had phonemenol ratings sometimes as high as 85% ! Look on YouTube for documentaries about KDKA and Pittsburgh radio & TV.
All thanks to the genius of Frank Conrad who operated experimental station 8XK from Wilkinsburg, PA. He worked with engineer and eventual Westinghouse vice president H.P. Davis, who was inspired by Frank Conrad's broadcasts of symphony music, operating without a license, constant reports of TVI, and his broadcast of election results. Davis correctly assumed that if Westinghouse created a radio station, they could create an audience, who would then buy lots of radio receivers which would be manufactured by Westinghouse, which is exactly what happened. Frank Conrad only had a seventh grade education, but due to his numerous patents and success as an experimenter, the University of Pittsburgh granted him an honorary doctor of science degree. Conrad was awarded more than 200 patents internationally throughout his life. He was awarded 177 U.S. patents, and at least 42 in the United Kingdom, and at least 9 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Conrad https://www.antiqueradios.com/features/kdka.html
W8XK will also be QRV as a "prelude to the Centennial Special Event" during the 2020 Pa QSO Party, 10 - 11 October. It will be one of the two Bonus Stations this year (along with K3MJW, the club call of the Skyview Radio Society, in commemoration of their 60th anniversary) W8XK / Pa QSO will be a separate operation from the November Special Event, and will have different QSL card. (Those contacts will NOT count for the Special Event certificate). More details on that to follow.
W8XK was also the call, in the late 1920's and 1930's, for the KDKA shortwave transmitter, before it was assigned WPIT. Westinghouse must have liked the call, since other 'experimental' shortwave calls they used at other stations included W1XK and W3XK (and possibly others that I'm not aware of)