What We Do...
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Gary Raney KM5TY and Louisa Preston KB5LBN,
operating in the Collegiate Championship radio
contest at club station
N5XU, November, 2001.
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The club holds monthly meetings on the University of Texas at Austin
campus. These meetings are an opportunity to learn about news in Amateur
Radio, plan organized club events, and to share information. We try to
have an informative presentation at each meeting on any of a wide
variety of topics related to radio and communications. In the past,
meeting program topics have included: antennas, radio contests,
packet radio, Amateur Radio and Public Service,
Amateur Radio Satellites,
radio history, lasers, Spread Spectrum, Digital Signal Processing, radio
remote control, repeaters, and much more!
UTARC publishes a monthly newsletter full of
information and events for UTARC members. The newsletter contains
a reminder about the upcoming meeting, news about central Texas and local
Austin Amateur Radio events, articles about alumni activities, and even
an occasional technical article. Electronic versions of the
newsletter are also available on this web site.
The University of Texas Amateur Radio Club also provides a station for our
members to use. Students often live in small apartments or dorms,
on small budgets, and often do not have their own elaborate shack of
equipment. The club station
is located on the roof of W. R. Woolrich Laboratories (WRW) on the U.T.
campus. With the call sign N5XU, UTARC believes that
it has one of the best equipped university club stations in the nation!
We provide access to all of the Amateur MF, HF, 50 MHz, 144 MHz, 222 MHz,
432 MHz, and 1296 MHz bands using voice, data and CW (Morse code). We're
continually upgrading and adding to the station in an effort to make it
the best we can.
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UTARC alumni Trey Garlough N5KO and James
Brooks
9V1YC operating near the Antarctic at
VP8GEO, on South Georgia Island,
February, 2002.
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The club has several members who are very active radiosport contesters,
and the many certificates on the walls of our shack testify to their success!
In a contest, Amateurs attempt to establish two-way communications and
exchange information with as many other Amateurs as they can in a given time
period. It's a great challenge that can push you to learn more about radio
propagation, equipment, and operations. Contests are also a great opportunity
for club members and friends to come together in multi-operator efforts
and have fun on the air. Each November, UTARC competes against other
university Amateur Radio clubs in the
Collegiate
Championship.
Several members and alumni are well-known DXers, and have helped the club
earn several awards. DXing is the art of establishing two-way communications
with distant or exotic stations around the world (the term "DX" itself
is a old telegraphy abbreviation for distance.) Members have used the
club stations to contact other Amateurs in hundreds of countries in all parts
of the globe. Some members and alumni have even taken their radios
abroad and operated from exotic locations like Singapore, the Solomon Islands,
Brazil, Honduras, the Galapagos Islands, Mexico, Spanish North Africa,
Costa Rica, American Samoa, Paraguay, and even small islands off the coast of
Antarctica!
Many of our club members enjoy
transmitter hunting,
around the Austin area and elsewhere. Whether in a vehicle or on foot, the
goal of these competitive events is to find the location of a radio
transmitter before the other competitors. Succesful radio direction-finding
techniques require understanding of propagation, equipment, and antennas.
Most transmitter hunters learn to build their own antennas and attenuators.
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