The official newsletter of the RPI Amateur Radio Club

January 2011 Volume 1 Issue 1

Celebrating 100 year of Being on the Air

Licensing Class held on Campus

Ess­Zed

Editor's Note: Please bear with us as we continue to improve this newsletter in the coming months.

President's Corner

Alex Richman

This school year could not have gotten off to a better start. I am pleased to say that W2SZ membership is growing for the second year in a row. Last year, we provided many services to the RPI community such as helping provide sound communication during a campus-wide lock down. Now we are prepping our service so we can help Rensselaer County if an emergency ever exists.

We have completed a few projects. Our latest and most impressive one is putting up a new satellite tower on the hill. This one was a challenge since the concrete weighed 400 pounds and we had to dig through rock with just a pick ax. We have two sections of the tower up and will resume finishing it when the weather gets nice again. Also, we are pleased to have installed a new Prosistel 71D rotator on the 120 ft tower which works great. It can turn 180 degrees in about 30 seconds which is really nice since it use to take us close to 5 minutes before. For next semester, we plan on switching our meetings to Saturdays at the Ham Shack on Sunset Terrace. We plan to do more projects, give classes to get people licensed, and of course have fun. We would love to hear from our Alumni. If you know Alumni that are not on our email list please tell us so we can inform them about all the great things we are doing as well as our preparation for our 100th

anniversary during Homecoming 2011. Please send me Ham stories, the band you are hanging out on, and what you have been doing recently.73s

Alex Richman can be contacted by e-mail at richma@rpi.edu .

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Table of Contents:President's Corner.............................................1

E-Board Rep Visits Shack.................................2

8 down 300 Million to go..................................2

Hampinion.........................................................4

Radio History.....................................................4

Calendar.............................................................6

Club Officers

President: Alex Richman

Vice-President: Ted Reiman

Treasurer:

Equipment Manager: Mike Treadwell

Newsletter Editor: Thomas Price

All articles must be submitted the 20th of the month before the newsletter is published

E-Board Rep visits the Shackby: Thomas Price

On December 4th 2011 Orian Breaux , the W2SZ, executive board rep came to visit the shack up on Sunset Terrace. The Club had been trying to get the executive board to do a visit of the current accommodations that are in bad shape. Those plans fell through this semester. The goal of this visit was to make sure that the condition of the shack was known prior to the budgeting process that occurs in the beginning of the spring semester.

The tour included showing the areas of the trailer that are in bad shape. Orian took pictures of holes and other damage that exists to the structure of the shack. With these images the executive board will better be able to understand the current status of the shack and equipment that is currently in our possession. In addition he also took a tour of the antenna towers on top of the hill.

The last part of the shack tour included a discussion of the plans for a new shack and several of the activities that are being considered for future club activities. Brandon Graham had detailed architectural drawings of the latest design for a new shack under consideration available.

The tour of the shack done with Orian, our e-board rep, should have a positive impact on major goals of the club both short and long term. Next year's budget allocation from the E-Board should reflect the current needs of the club. In the long term the condition of the shack has been cataloged for the Executive Board of the Student Union to review.

8 down, 300 million to goby: Brandon Graham

What better way to recruit new members to Amateur Radio than to host a Technician class andVE session. Plant the seed for the beginnings of the great and growing hobby of Amateur Radioand people will grow a tail and become Hams! New members to bring fresh ideas to an activitybased on 100 year old ideals of communication and good hearted fun. Introducing ham radio tothose interested brings more personalities to the air to meet hams across the bands.

On December 4th and 5th W2SZ hosted a weekend long Technician class with an open VEsession to follow. The class was designed to teach beginners everything that they need toknow to pass the Technician class and then some was a good start for many people. With thespectrum of technical knowledge that is present with RPI students, teaching the class can bedifficult. Many of the students in attendance were members of RPI Ambulance with a basicbackground in public service radio communications. Several of the attendees had never worked with radiocommunications equipment before, with the exception of cell phones. Creating a class that would beinteresting to many different people can be challenging; a challenge that Bill Edgar N3LLR and

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Alex Richman (left) watches as Orian Breaux (right) takes pictures of the lab in the shack

Sandy Hallows KB3SVH took up to educate new hams.The support for the Tech class originally came from Bill Edgar while he was helping me with

ideas for the club. After bringing up the idea of the class, he offered to drive 6 hours to Troy fora weekend and teach it. When I said that I could try to find another ham in the area to teach theclass, he replied “Bringing new people into Amateur Radio keeps me active and excited. I wouldmake the trip even if you only had two people in the class just to see them pass.” So naturally Iasked if he would do it for one.

After some light advertising, we had 14 interested people sign up for the class and to receivebooks. As the weeks rolled on, preparations continued, classes gathered steam, and studentsrealized upcoming deadlines. Due to finals and projects being due, some students dropped withthe interest as to when the next class would be held.

Starting at 8:00 Saturday morning, the class met in the JEC 6309 Studio and began. With 9 peoplein attendance, the class finished the following day with 8 Techs (several of which almost passedGeneral), a General and another determined to get their Tech at the next VE session.

Bill Edgar N3LLR Atlantic Division Director, Sandy Hallows KB3SVH Atlantic Division ARES Director, Joyce Birmingham KA2ANF Hudson Division Director, and George Sabbi KC2GLGHudson Division Assistant Director were VEs for the session held Sunday December 5th. Thiswas a unique opportunity because it might have been the first time 2 Division Directors from twodifferent Divisions hosted a VE Session and we were able to work with W2SZ’s Director and ourneighboring Director.

We now welcome with great pleasure:

Jason Lee KC2ZOFJoey Steven KC9TKRMatt Willett KB1VBOMichael Rutherford KF7NFHMichal Nowicki KB1VBPMike O'Keefe KB1VBNRoger Barret Rehr KB3VLX

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From lef to right: (back row) Michael Nowicki, Joey Stevens, Mike O'Keefe, Roger Barrett Rehr, Michael Rutherford, Brandon Graham KB3IGC, Ted Reimann KB1NTJ(middle row)Candy Lin, Joyce Birmingham KA2ANF, Sandy Hallows KB3SVH, Bill Edgar N3LLR(front row) ,Jason Lee, Matt Willett, Victoria Christof, Steve Dombrowski WB2ZUQ

Victoria Christof KC2ZOE

Hampinion:By:Thomas Price

It is essential that as members of the amateur radio community that we operate on a fairly regular basis. I know from my past experiences that it is easy to get in a rut of not operating. There are several good reasons to create a pattern of operating.

The first good reason is that operating was one of the primary reason people get their licenses. I found that although I had my license I was never operating. I have come to realize that this is a course of action that is somewhat common. The key to solving this problem is creating an active operating community that is supportive of new hams. I plan on encouraging as many opportunities for members to operate whether it be a contest, ragchewing on HF, or just a net on the repeater.

The importance of operating is also that we, amateur operators, should be using as many bands as we possibly can. This show of use is helpful in protecting operating frequencies in an already crowded spectrum. The estimates are that most people will continue to increase the number of mobile devices which will require more bandwidth. Some of the prime locations for possible additional bandwidth lie in the VHF amateur bands. This would be a sad and permanent loss to the ham community if frequency allocations were reduced.

This column is where club members and alumni can express their views on current issues in amateur radio and other related topics. The opinions printed are not those of the club or the RPI Student Union.

Radio Historyby Thomas Price

This column is intended to provide some historical context to this club as it celebrate 100 years of being a part of the RPI campus. In general the vignettes of history provided in this column will be about the history of radio technology, amateur radio, and most importantly club history. If you would like to provide an article for this column please feel free to.

The RPI Amateur Radio Club (W2SZ) is almost as old as radio technology itself. This a testament to the students at RPI wanting to be on the cutting edge of technology. Most amateur radio operators use transistor based technology in their operating stations, and have heard of tubes. The question one would surely ask is what was radio like before these technologies existed and were in mass production.

The very first radio transmission to have been heard was from Guillermo Marconi from St. John's Newfoundland and Cornwall in England. At that time the method he used to produce a transmission was a spark gap transmitter and a large wire antenna. The spark gap transmitter was particularly noise and limited to operating using Morse code. It should be noted that this method was not particularly efficient as it required high voltages for the spark, but the resulting radio wave was not strong in addition to creating plenty of other unnecessary frequencies. This method would last as one of the major contenders in the race for radio dominance until after World War I.

The other method that was devised us alternators to provide the radio frequency signal. Ernest Alexanderson came with a method of generating a modulated signal that proved to be more reliable. He

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took an alternator, a product used in the power and motor industry at the time, and modified it for use in radio. This system could be modulated with initially Morse code and eventually voice by applying the modulating signal to one of the windings on the apparatus. There is a great book by James Britain about Ernest Alexanderson and his many technological innovations. The Alexanderson system would be used in New Jersey and on Long Island, New York as the backbone of RCA's first international radio communication system.

While the era of vacuum tubes and solid state transistors may have increased the capabilities of amateur radios and radio communications in general, there was still an interesting time period prior to these innovations where radio technology was being used. I hope that the two different historical systems discussed in this article will be looked at in more depth in this column in the future.

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