May
15
Amateur Radio at University of California
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Beginnings of our club in the dawn of the wireless age
Triggered by the discoveries of Heinrich Herz and James Clark Maxwell in the nineteen’s century, Amateur Radio was a movement of youngsters who were excited to use the discovery of radio-magnetic waves to communicate with each other. They managed to build wireless equipment literally out of nothing and established thriving communication networks in many metropolitan areas in the US around 1906/1907. Nothing was regulated and the official players like the Navy and commercial radio on ships (Marconi company etc.) just made their first clumsy attempts with this new technology. The concept of broadcast was not invented before the 1920ies. The Amateur Radio Club of the University of California was founded in 1914, still in the dawn of the wireless age. The founders were three senior students who had participated as high school students in the first wireless activities in the San Francisco Bay area around 1906 (see “W6BB” at www.qrz.com).
Amateur (Ham) Radio — uhhh, what is this???
Yesterday: In contrast to broadcast listening, the name Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) described the activity of radio enthusiasts who also built transmitters to engage in two-way communication. Amateur Radio went through a number of different phases. In the 1920ies, it was radio amateurs who discovered through their experiments that the short waves enable worldwide communication with moderate antenna size and transmitting power. In the 1930ies and 1940ies, amateur radio provided communication for various expeditions, such as the Byrd antarctic expeditions, many Russian arctic expedition, and Thor Heyerdahls first expedition. In the 1950ies and 1960ies, the amateur radio community grew steeply and formed the first worldwide network, connecting people from different countries and backgrounds (see Kirsten Haring: Ham Radio’s Technical Culture, MIT Press). Beginning in the 1970ies and 1980ies, radio amateurs were able to communicate with astronauts and through earth satellites.
Today: Before the internet, only Amateur Radio could enable affordable communication between two individuals thousands of miles apart. The internet provides now a cheap, much easier alternative. But at the same time, the internet is dominating our lives to an extent that we often feel trapped behind keyboard and screen within our virtual existences. Today, a crucial question has become how to sometimes sneak offline and have tangible experiences in the real physical world. Going wireless can provide such a refreshing break. You can be part of an international community crossing borders and continents by relying solely on your engineering skills and knowledge of terrestrial and solar physics, not on internet providers and cell phone services. Amateur Radio offers a unique playground for acquiring skills like operating transmitters and receivers, electronics, morse code, direction finding, digital signal processing, and many others. It enables communication in remote areas and during emergency situations, if telephone lines are far or dysfunctional. It is curious that analog modes on radio waves provide a real time quality of communication, which the web cannot easily match.
If you are at UC Berkeley in any capacity, and this sounds intriguing or interesting to you, please join in. In case you do not already hold a radio license, please participate in one of our licensing classes..
The W6BB/NU6XB University of California Berkeley Amateur Radio Club
May
8
Recent activities at W6BB
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Just an update: The club is alive but, due to some active club members leaving UC Berkeley, it has not been very active the last two years. That said, Miki Lustig, KK6MRI and Tom Zajdel, AI6CU have held exam classes almost every semester. Also, with the invaluable help of Sharon Primbsch, AA6XZ, and her VE team there have been regularly exam classes on campus every year. The club has two radio shacks, one in the Richmond Field Station (W6BB) and one in Cory Hall (NU6XB). An updated account of the long and colorful history of the UC Amateur Radio Club dating back to 1914 can be found on the qrz webpage under W6BB (I will transfer this content soon to this webpage).
If you want to participate or get more information, please contact Miki or Fritz.
Also, please sign up to the mailing list – mainly for announcing meetings.
Fritz Sommer, K6EE, Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience
Oct
30
Second successful 2014 exam session held on UC Berkeley campus
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Initiated by Miki Lustig, KK6MRI, the W6BB Amateur Radio Club organized an exam session on Oct 27, 2014.
Most of the candidates came from a course that Miki is teaching this semester. The session produced 12 new technician licenses, 2 new general licenses and 1 extra license. The VE team consisted of:
Sharon Primbsch, AA6XZ
Randy Jenkins, KA6BQF
David Haycock, KI6AWR
Gerald Foster, WA6BXV
Fritz Sommer, K6EE
Sharon wants to thank all candidates for being the first group to successfully sign up on our website. This was a tremendous help in streamlining and reducing paperwork.
Concerning the next on campus exam session: Please spread the word that the next big one will be held in spring 2015. Further, if there is interest in a sooner exam session, some of the VE team might be up for organizing another smaller session in the nearer future.