Joe Rodgers at Sept '99 Tower Party
Historical Shack Photos (1960s)
Working on our HF Tribander Beam
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Joe Rodgers at Sept '99 Tower Party |
Historical Shack Photos (1960s) |
Working on our HF Tribander Beam |
Membership in the SMU Amateur Radio Club is open to all SMU students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
We welcome visitors who would like to learn more about amateur radio and
visit our amateur radio club station W5YF. We also provide amateur radio license
video training on-demand and classroom review sessions to help you get your amateur radio license.
Join us to share the fun of amateur radio!
The SMU amateur radio club has an active calendar for 2004 of weekly events and activities related to amateur radio open
to all who wish to participate.
We also have special events (and past events) such as antenna raising
parties, licensing classes, radio station operation demonstrations, trips to
local electronics sales and local
electronics related sites, and emergency operations training during Field Day (in June).
The SMU Amateur Radio Club has monthly meetings during the fall and spring
semesters at SMU's Caruth Engineering Building (at 3145 Dyer). Check our calendar of events for 2004 for details on
upcoming club meetings, special event operations, contest operations, and club projects.
The SMU Amateur Radio Club station W5YF is located on the third floor of the Caruth Engineering
building in room 304. Special thanks to our new Engineering Dean Prof. Stephen Szygenda and our club
advisor Prof. Milton Gosney for making these
new and expanded club station facilities available to us in October 2002!
The SMU amateur radio club was founded in the mid 1920s. The SMU amateur
radio club is one of the oldest student organizations on the SMU campus. Our club station has been
on the air for over 70 years, with the notable exception of World War II (by gov't order). We are celebrating
over 75 years of service to our community during the current 2002/3 school year!
The our licensed club members can use our 1,500 watt W5YF shortwave station
to make contacts all over the world. We have just added in late fall 2002 a new modern
VHF/UHF station which can provide local VHF/UHF contacts. We are now
adding amateur satellite communications capabilities, including an X-Y satellite tracking antenna system
and UHF microwave satellite band frequencies in Spring 2003.
A new digital communications capability is being setup in Spring 2003
using our PacComm PSK-1T terminal node controller (TNC) with the new VHF/UHF FT-736R transceiver. This station
upgrade will enable us to use all of the most popular analog and digital amateur satellite communications
modes, along with local VHF packet network operations.
Our Kamtronics Plus multimode TNC will enable us to use digital modes with our high frequency ICOM IC781 transceiver,
as well supporting a second local VHF packet system. The Kamtronics Plus TNC supports G-TOR, radioteletype (RTTY),
AMTOR and PacTOR, packet (with 512kb memory), and morse code (CW) decoding.
We are also soliciting help from all those who want to work on a truly "out of this world" project - developing
software for AMSAT - the amateur radio satellite corporation. This
AMSAT software project seeks to develop software which will be used to download and
interpret telemetry to monitor the spacecraft's "health" from AMSAT's new ECHO satellite, the upcoming AMSAT
EAGLE satellite, and the PHASE V missions to MARS starting in 2007 AD. The AMSAT ECHO satellite is scheduled to be launched in November 2003.
Please contact us if you would like to help with this AMSAT project!
| Inventor of IC "chip", Nobel Prize Winner Jack S. Kilby Credits Amateur Radio for His Start in Electronics |
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| I thought that amateur radio was a fascinating subject. It sparked my interest in electronics, and that's when I decided that this field was something I wanted to pursue.... from Nobel Prize Site Biography |
One of our goals in the SMU Amateur Radio Club is to provide an introduction to newcomers to
the international hobby of amateur radio. So we offer
training classes
and training videos and related resources to help you
get licensed.
Please note that you do NOT have to be a U.S. citizen to get your amateur radio license.
We encourage foreign students to get their U.S. amateur radio licenses too. Frankly,
amateur radio is a great way to meet local hams, many of whom work in local technical industries, providing a great
networking opportunity for SMU engineering students.
Moreover, amateur radio offers a great deal of practical, hands-on
experience working with electronics and telecommunications systems. These kinds of skills have real potential for helping
you land that future technical job and opens career opportunities to you too!
We provide an exceptionally fine amateur radio station under the club callsign
of W5YF. Our ICOM IC-781 shortwave transceiver station features a variety of
equipment for shortwave listening and
transmitting code, data, or single sideband voice contacts, including a high power 1,500+ watt
amplifier and triband beam antenna. We hope to add a dedicated computer and the software required to use digital
data, radioteletype (RTTY), and Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) on this fine station in the upcoming Spring 2003 semester.
Our Yaesu FT-736R VHF/UHF station provides operations on the 6 meter, 2 meter,
and 1 1/4 meter bands. This new VHF/UHF station upgrade permits us to transmit code, and single sideband
or FM voice. Thanks to a generous donation by Mr. Richard
Raitt, we will be adding microwave satellite communications at 1.2 Gigahertz (uplink) and 2.4 Gigahertz (downlink)
to our VHF/UHF station in early 2003.
We also have a UHF fast-scan amateur television receiver for
the AB5IG DFW area television repeater. Our plans for Spring 2003 include putting a NTSC broadcast quality
amateur television transmitter on the air at W5YF. Using the AB5IG ATV repeater, our 55 milliwatt (1/20th watt!)
transmitter signal will be rebroadcast over the entire DFW metroplex area (i.e., a sixty mile coverage circle).
We also feature Wireless Telecommunications and Internet technologies at the monthly meeting of the SMU Amateur Radio Club. Come learn, experiment, and operate electronics, radio communications, and Internet devices. Listen to short-wave broadcasts. Get your operators license and talk around the world. Get on our mailing list and join us for amateur radio related events throughout the semester!!
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