Taking "eclectic" to the next level
Today’s “Digital Planet” program on the BBC World Service features a section about HOPE, which in and of itself is really cool.
Know what’s even cooler? You can hear me “Calling CQ” from the N2H radio station at the beginning of the segment!
This past weekend, i helped out with the special event station N2H at The Next HOPE. We worked everything from 2 to 20 meters, including FM, SSB, CW, PSK and RTTY. It was pretty cool doing digital modes for the first time. Here are some pictures of us setting up the antennas on the roof, as well as operating during the conference.
I was looking around trying to remember what news articles I’ve been in recently, and so to save myself from having to do it again in the future I figured I’d post them here.
Daily Collegian
IST / Penn State Official News
News about HOPE talk
Other news articles
The Penn State Amateur Radio Club turned 100 years old this year, and to celebrate we held a special event station over the weekend of April 18th and 19th. For both days, we had operators on the air using our special event callsign K3PSU which we borrowed from a local ham for the event. More details on the event over in my post about it.
For those unfamiliar with the workings of the amateur radio world, when you contact a special event station, it’s expected that you will get a fancy postcard in the mail validating your contact. There are contests worldwide that focus on such cards. Our cards, modeled after the 1950s QSL card (QSL means “acknowledge receipt of signal”), came in the mail weeks after the semester ended. So I’m only now getting to the list of people who need to be sent a card.
Our QSL cards
QSL cards from people who I sent cards to today
Today's outgoing mail
We had about 200 stations checking in. Today I was only able to get through the people who have sent us their QSL cards first, and even within that set I was only able to finish the subset of people who were nice enough to include a self-addressed stamped envelope. There’s about 180 more to go, and I think I smell a project for our next meeting.
Just for fun, I snapped the following image on my way out. It’s the stack of QSL cards from the school year 2008-2009, and ONLY those cards from that year specifically addressed to us, K3CR. Just one of the little boxes could contain over 200 cards.
QSL cards 2008-2009
Last weekend was the 100th anniversary event for the Penn State Amateur Radio Club. We sent out a press release to every newspaper in the area, and they all ran at least part of it. Well, everyone except the Daily Collegian, who never even returned my emails. You’d think that something as interesting as the 100th anniversary of a club on campus would warrant some space in their paper, but I guess they had more important things to report on.
Preliminary news articles and full press release here.
We started out on Saturday morning by opening up the station for visitors, while running our special event station. In terms of visitors, we had people from NASA and all around the local area, as well as Penn State professors and students. They all seemed very interested in what we were doing, and a few were even brave enough to get on the air. For the event, we used both the HF yagi antenna we already had on the roof, as well as a new inverted V that Professor Breakall set up just for the event.
HF Yagi and mount point for the inverted V
Inverted V
The special event station, K3PSU, got around 200 contacts over the course of the weekend, averaging 100 per day. Each one will be receiving a special QSL card we’re having made up. Here’s the prototype that the designer came up with:
Front of the 100th QSL card
Back of the QSL card
On Sunday, we had our foxhunt. I served as the fox, and was tasked with hiding somewhere on campus for the EE class and some other residents that decided to join in on the fun to find. I decided that the upper quad in West Halls was the perfect location, so I set up my folding chair and settled in for the afternoon. It took about 20 minutes for Professor Breakall to find me, and then another half hour or so for everyone else to make it there.
All in all, an excellent weekend. QSL cards should be printed soon, and then sent out as soon as the station logs are completed.
Nick Leghorn is a Pennsylvania State University graduate living in Virginia and was browbeaten into creating this blog. Visit NickLeghorn.com for more.
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