W5YF - S.M.U. Amateur Radio Club Equipment (2004 Update)

Club president Lance Fisher and I (Robert Monaghan) were shocked when we prepared our ARRL affiliated club fiings and related ARRL club insurance paperwork. Our calculations suggest that it would take over $20,000 (!) to recreate the SMU amateur radio (and amateur television) station at Southern Methodist University. Wow!

Reviewing the listing below will highlight how much activity is now underway at W5YF and the SMU amateur radio club during the summer of 2004. Thanks to Allen Gwinn, we have an emergency powered UHF (440 Mhz) repeater donation (value over $1,200!) and a frequency allocation request pending (as of 1 August 2004). We are starting to produce our own video programs of club meetings, antenna construction parties, promotional videos, and other events for our amateur television station use.

We are hoping to recycle a used Kenpro AZ-EL rotator to enable us to get active on the new ECHO OSCAR-51 (launched June 29, 2004) and AMSAT digital packet satellites too. We are setting up our newly donated Yaesu FT1500m 2m FM transceiver to work the local 2m packet network, as well as local repeaters and the Easy-Sats such as Echo OSCAR-51 and Saudi-Sat OSCAR-50 orbiting FM repeaters. [Thanks again to Gene Shablygin W3UA for this very useful donation!]

We have also just gotten a 1,500 watt 8 band vertical antenna funded over the summer (thanks again to Kylie Slater and the SMU Student Senate Summer Executive Committee!). This new antenna will allow us to use the WARC bands (e.g., 30m, 17m, 12m..) and have a low radiation angle long distance capability. Even better, we will be able to use our full 1,500 watts legal power limit from our Collins 30L-1 amplifier on these shortwave bands, without fear of melting our low power "local contact" dipole wire antennas.

We are opening up new capabilities for building amateur radio equipment, thanks to some low power QRP radio transmitters and receiver projects. Our club library has expanded greatly, thanks to over 100+ books and even more electronics magazines and amateur radio books on loan from club treasurer Robert Monaghan. We hope to provide a pretty extensive set of amateur radio test gear on loan for future club projects too. This test gear will supplement the donations of surplus SMU test equipment provided by our club advisor, Dr. Milton Gosney.

We believe that one of the major benefits we can offer to SMU students, especially in engineering, is the chance to learn by hands-on building of equipment and antennas and related projects. Amateur radio can enable engineering students to go beyond building kits to creating and building their own designs and testing them on-the-air!

At the other end of the SMU student spectrum, we hope to promote shortwave listening as a hobby and as an entry point to amateur radio. Towards this end we are preparing talks, access to shortwave radios, building of shortwave radio kits (e.g., at IEEE workshops), and resources like books on shortwave radio listening. There is a lot of interest in overseas news and events (e.g., war in Iraq), and a sizeable population of foreign students at SMU interested in hearing the news from home directly. So we believe shortwave listening programs would be popular and useful to many SMU students, even those who aren't into the technical end of radios. Similarly, we hope to interest film and art students in producing video programs for our amateur television station (e.g., we have a 50 minute video on sculpture in DFW underway).

The 2005 school year is believed to be our 75th anniversary as a licensed radio station and club at SMU (with only the suspension of transmitting during World War II as an inactive period). We are working on an amateur television series on our club's long history, and how amateur radio has influenced so many of our past member's life choices. We are also planning a Special Event Station celebrating our 75th anniversary on-the-air with a nationally sanctioned special event activity. We are looking at launching a high altitude balloon with amateur radio (and amateur television) capabilities to the Edge of Space!

So now you can see why we are so actively working on many fronts - in satellite operations capabilities, on getting digital packet operations, on our emergency powered UHF repeater, our long distance antenna capabilities with improved signal strengths and amateur band choices, and all the other efforts you see going on here on this page. We want to be ready to really celebrate our 75th anniversary with a full spectrum of amateur radio and amateur television station capabilities!!!

















W5YF Club Library

You probably didn't expect me to list our radio club's library as our primary asset? But information is really the most critical element for doing amateur radio. Our current club library is centered around an ARRL affiliated club special promotion (from 2001). Thanks to our then club president, Tony Klinkert, we were able to acquire a club library package of the major ARRL amateur radio publications, along with a library of videotape programs for our club meetings.

These ARRL resources extended the amateur radio and electronics magazines and books provided by our club advisor, Dr. Milton Gosney, KG5RO, and club trustee Luther Pully, W5JIZ. (see listings of resources). In summer of 2004, our library was expanded by a major loan of 100+ electronics books, many magazines, and related resources including videotapes (courtesy of club treasurer, Robert Monaghan).

SMU's Amateur Radio Club Library Big Surprise...
What's the big surprise about SMU's amateur radio club library? Simply stated, we are shocked to see that we have more current amateur radio and electronics books and videotape resources than the Dallas Public Library or SMU's own science library. In fairness, the Dallas Library does have more dated ham radio magazine back issues and titles. But if you are looking for reference materials or how-to books or electronics project materials, you probably want to start with our growing SMU amateur radio club library!


Radio club libraries need to be dynamic. Our library should reflect the needs of our club and its members, and grow and expand as the club's capabilities and members interests grow and expand. In our case, a review of our club's books by topic shows some developing strengths. For example, we have a pretty good section on antenna construction, which reflects our need to build many of our own antennas and upgrade existing antennas at our station. We have some buyers guide materials for our members looking for information to purchase their own amateur radio station equipment. Our section on electronics construction projects and building test gear is also impressive.

On the other hand, we have surprisingly little material on amateur television or VHF/UHF operations. Some of this material is covered in the ARRL Handbook(s) or operations manuals. But we need to expand our resources in this area to better reflect our growing VHF and UHF interests. Similarly, our ARRL club library package purchase in 2001 AD is now becoming dated as three or four new editions of these classic resource books have been updated and published through 2004 AD.

Equipment Listing (from 2002/3)