Happy New Owner of SMU ARC's Workhorse KWM2A HF Transceiver Promises to Give It A Good Home!
Most of the Radios in this Photo along with the KWM2A were sold to help buy the new FT736R and Satellite Antenna System
We are especially interested in gifts
and donations of equipment which can be used to extend the capabilities of our station. We also welcome
donations of time by volunteers to help in amateur radio club projects, upcoming events, station repairs
and upgrades, teaching of radio classes and operations techniques, and related help and assistance!
So SMU student senate funds and club dues could not provide enough money in any one year to enable buying
even a modest piece of station equipment. At best, we might get a few accessories such as a microphone
or clock out of such limited capital equipment funds in any given year. But we could never get capital equipment
funding for a major piece of equipment like a FT736R VHF/UHF transceiver from SMU Student Senate club funding sources.
In the last 2002/3 fiscal year, the SMU amateur radio club received a total of only $356 of some $3,070 requested for events and
activities. Sales of used station equipment and donations have had to cover these substantial shortfalls in funding
for club events and programs too. The running
costs of maintenance and ARRL insurance on the remaining station equipment are more than our entire official funding of $356!
Just how much of an amateur radio station can we fund on less than $1 per day for equipment and events? That's why we
need donations of unused or unloved equipment!
We also got lucky! Quite a few of our older radios were being nursed along and kept going because they were all
we had and were likely to get. I am embarrassed to admit that a number of these radios dated from the 1960s and 1970s,
and featured "empty state" or tube technology throughout (no transistors, let alone ICs). How is that lucky? All this
gear turned out to be "collectible" and nostalgic amateur radio equipment (see for example, January 2003 QST
dedicated to amateur radio history and nostalgia).
The money raised by selling our old Collins KWM2A and 75A4 receiver helped pay for our new VHF/UHF Yaesu FT736R rig.
We also have to put circa $800 into a secure roof mounting for a VHF/UHF satellite (x-y dual rotator) antenna system.
Doing so will exhaust our remaining funds from past equipment sales and donations. That means all of our other projects
and events will have to be funded out of monies generated by donations and the very modest amounts from SMU student senate
capital funds.
The second class of gear donation is gear that can be refurbished and resold, such as the classic Drake TR-22 FM
transceiver donated below. Our older station equipment has already been sold last year to raise funds for
the Yaesu FT736R and satellite antenna roof mountings, rotators, and VHF and UHF beam antennas. So even small
donations and items like this Drake TR22 can enable us to achieve one more project, perhaps even two small projects
costing just $100 or so each.
We could really use one or more working portable or fixed station shortwave receivers donations in 2004/5.
Shortwave radio is one of the easiest ways to get SMU students interested in radio, an interest which can easily
be transferred to amateur radio and getting licensed and on the air themselves!
With the current interest in the war in Iraq (summer, 2004), SMU students are growing more aware of foreign events
and their importance in all of our lives. Our programs on how to get started with shortwave listening, planned for
the fall of 2004 semester, will hopefully attract many of those who would like to learn about how to get their news
directly from the source. Similarly, we expect that many foreign students would be interested in keeping track of
events back home via shortwave listening too. Foreign students represent a substantial part of SMU's student body,
particularly in the School of Engineering.
So we hope that these shortwave listener's "how-to" programs will attract many SMU students to enjoy
the hobby of shortwave listening. And once they hear other radio amateurs on the air, and know there is an amateur
radio station at SMU for them to use, how long before some of these students decide to become radio amateurs themselves?
Isn't that how most of us became radio amateurs, first by listening to shortwave radio broadcasts, then going on to
become radio amateurs and get on-the-air ourselves?
Robert Monaghan, our club treasurer, has purchased a Degen 1103 digital shortwave radio (under $50 + s/h on Ebay - 8/2004)
covering 0.1 to 30 Mhz. Unlike most other under $100 portable SWL receivers, this model has a BFO and detector
for SSB and CW, plus an "analog dial" fine tuning knob, making it ideal for future amateur radio converts use too.
But we currently don't have a modern replacement for our old Hallicrafters tube shortwave radio sold five years ago.
So if you have an old or under-used shortwave receiver, we would be delighted to put it to use as a SWL receiver!
VHF/UHF Receiver Donation
While we have a broad high frequency receiving capacity (from 0.1 to 30 Mhz), we have only a very limited range of amateur
radio VHF and UHF receiving capabilities in the VHF and UHF range. Thanks to the generous donation of a Yaesu FT1500M
2m FM transceiver by Gene Shablygin (W3UA), we have some limited public service and emergency radio frequency monitoring capabilities
around the 2m band (on FM only). But this leaves us unable to receive 99% of the VHF and UHF frequencies. So we obviously need a broadly tuning
VHF/UHF radio receiver, possibly starting with a programmable FM VHF/UHF "scanner" radio. But there are some fully featured VHF/UHF receivers
which are capable of providing not just FM but other modes of radio reception (SSB, AM, CW, wide-band FM, video, digital, fax, WEather-FAX, RTTY..).
We would like to have the facility to listen in on various orbiting satellites, including the ISS Space Station Freedom,
using such a VHF/UHF general purpose receiver.
Call for Amateur Radio and Electronic Projects Books and Magazine Donations!
We already have a surprisingly decent amateur radio library, thanks to our ARRL 2001 Club Library package purchase
(under club president Tony Klinkert in 2001/2). But there are probably dozens of books which we could put to use in our club
library gathering dust out there. We would be especially happy to get donations of amateur radio magazines, such
as QST, Ham Radio, CQ publications, and 73 - Amateur Radio. Electronics magazines such
as Popular Electronics, Elementary Electronics, Radio Electronics, and others would also be welcome!
What publications have you got gathering dust that you don't need anymore? Why not make a tax deductible donation?
Test Equipment and Junque Box Development
Now I know lots of Dallas-Fort Worth hams have lots of stuff in their "junk boxes" which would be useful
for projects. From 1998 through 2003, we had only a Radio Shack 3 1/2 digit multimeter as test equipment in the
SMU radio club "shack". We are just now [8/2004] acquiring a Heathkit HM-10A tunnel dip meter (cf. grid dip meter). This
item is one of the most useful piece of test gear around an amateur radio station. You can use it to help setup
antennas, help design and build RF equipment like QRP or low power transmitters, and use it to help test and repair
broken equipment. But our $2 per day budget from SMU Student Senate only goes so far, especially with so many
projects to do. So we would be delighted to put to use your old test equipment and unused "junk box" parts in
future club projects!
Microwave Related Resources
Some areas of amateur radio at S.M.U. need to be expanded, including our microwave capabilities. We have passed
on a request that the large microwave dishes atop Caruth Engineering Building not be torn down as SMU
switches to newer satellite frequencies and online Internet distribution of streaming video. Leaving these
microwave dishes in place would save SMU and the School of Engineering a lot of money
(otherwise needed to be spent on removing them with a crane et.cet.). These same microwave dishes could easily
be modified to work on a number of UHF and above microwave bands.
These large dishes would be excellent resources for microwave related projects at SMU, including some hands on
training projects for SMU engineering students and radio amateurs in this technical area. One interesting project
would be EME - earth-moon-earth or "moon bounce", in which a microwave signal is bounced off the moon a quarter
million+ miles away and back to earth. Only a few hundred amateur radio stations have moon bounce EME capabilities,
and rather fewer have microwave EME facilities. Using the high gain possible with such large microwave dishes already
installed atop Caruth Engineering would make microwave band EME or moon bounce from SMU a real possibility.
Even better, these microwave dishes are only a few yards away from our roof-top access port for running cables, and
at these frequencies, short cable lengths are a real plus!
But to use these microwave dish resources, we need to develop our club's microwave based resources. We plan on
starting small, with a simple 10 Ghz Gunn diode based transceiver project. We will need to start building a test
equipment base for microwave frequency work too. We will need sundry test gear and facilities to make our own
printed circuit boards. All of these resources will be very useful in other areas of amateur radio and electronic
projects for our members and SMU students, faculty, staff, and SMU amateur radio club alumni.
Thanks to SMU's Allen Gwinn for his talk and tour on emergency communications at SMU (on video in our club
library as of 7/2004). As an indirect result of this program, we got a donation of a commercial 100+ watt UHF repeater
(value over $1,200) which can be recrystalled onto the 440 Mhz ham band!!! Great! Allen Gwinn was also instrumental
in providing a repeater site with full-time emergency power for this UHF repeater. As a result, we hope to be able
to offer an amateur radio UHF repeater with emergency power for helping train and coordinate our local resources
in the event of sundry local emergencies (e.g., power blackouts, tornadoes, terrorist attacks, etc.).
Yaesu FT1500M 2m 50 watt FM Transceiver Donation!
Thanks to Gene Shablygin, W3UA, we have a Yaesu FT1500M 2 meter FM transceiver donation. This 2m transceiver is
really a fantastic addition to our station VHF capabilities.
The high power output options, from 5 watts up to 50 watts, make this
radio an ideal 2 meter uplink transmitter to the "Easy Sats" using simple antennas on transmit as well as receive.
The "Easy Sats" include the newly launched (on June 29, 2004) ECHO OSCAR-51, as well as the Saudi Arabian amateur
radio satellite SO-50, now newly opened for operation by USA amateurs.
The Yaesu FT1500M also has a nifty extended receive capability around 2 meter FM frequencies. We are using it
to monitor the NOAA weather radio frequencies, especially during the 18 days of deluges in June 2004 and the
floods at the end of July 2004. The radio also provides us with the ability to listen to certain local emergency
radio frequencies used by various public safety services (e.g., fire, EMT, police..). Other frequencies are on
local aviation and airport control frequencies, which can now also be monitored.
A third excellent feature of the Yaesu FT1500M 2m FM transceiver is its designed in capabilities to interface
with a high speed packet digital radio modem. Fortunately, we have a Kamtronics KAM+ modem and TNC which has
been tied to our ICOM 781 high frequency radio. Connecting the second port on this KAM+ modem/TNC to the newly
donated Yaesu FT1500M makes it possible to receive the digital packet networks operating on 2 meter FM locally.
This capability would be critical in the event of many local or regional emergencies.
Ham-IV Rotator and Control Box for VHF/UHF Antennas Donation!
Thanks to our club treasurer, Robert Monaghan, we received a Ham-IV rotator and control box (value ~$500)
for use with our VHF/UHF antenna project (e.g., for August 14th 2004 antenna party).
While these items don't cost a great deal, they do provide a lot of additional capabilities when added in
with the rest of our station facilities. But having an ATV receiving setup is frustrating, when you are only
a few hundred dollars worth of gear away from having the ability to transmit as well as receive ATV! So our
goal is to complete the "loose ends" of our station, improve our antenna setups to match our equipment capabilities,
and do what we can to prepare for emergency communications needs in the uncertain future....
Let us know if you see some item you aren't using that we can put to use in these projects. Thank you!!!
Thanks to this generous donation, we will be able to extend our fledgling satellite station into the gigahertz bands, enabling many more modes and satellites to be used. With the right FT736R transceiver module, we will be able to transmit mode L uplinks on 1.2 Gigahertz band and receive downlinks on various bands, including 2.4 Ghz. mode S downlinks as on AMSAT's A040 satellite.