UTARC VHF
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George K5TR installing the 6M yagi
antenna at N5XU
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The University of
Texas Amateur Radio Club has a long
history of activity on the VHF bands. Our
VHF/UHF
equipment allows us to work the six meter (50 MHz), two meter (144
MHz), one and a quarter meter (222 MHz), seventy centimeter (432 MHz),
and twenty-three centimeter (1296 MHz) Amateur Radio bands. Our present
VHF SSB/CW "Weak Signal" equipment consists of four radios, two
transverters, and five mono-band yagi antennas. N5XU is the only college
or university club station in the country to have earned the prestigious
VHF/UHF Century Club
(VUCC) award from the American Radio Relay League (ARRL.) The club
station has been used to work several countries in two continents on
50 MHz. We are active on HSCW and SSB meteor scatter on 144 MHz, and
we are starting to become active on the microwave bands. N5XU
operates several VHF contests a year, and even holds the current West
Gulf division Limited Multioperator record score for the ARRL January
VHF Sweepstakes. As far as we know, we are the only college or
university club station in the country that is presently active on
five VHF/UHF bands.
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VHF/UHF "Weak Signal" DX
N5XU has already earned its membership in the American Radio Relay
League's VHF/UHF Century
Club for the 50 MHz band. The club station is actively
working on VUCC status on the 144 MHz, 222 MHz, 432 MHz, and 1296 MHz
bands as well. The club station has been used to make contacts via
"Sporadic E", meteor scatter, tropospheric scatter, tropospheric
ducting, TEP, and "moonbounce" propagation modes. Check out our
confirmed grid maps!
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VHF Contesting
UTARC has made numerous significant VHF
contesting efforts.
We hold the West Gulf Division record score
for the ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes in the Limited Multioperator class,
and we have won the South Texas section in the ARRL September VHF QSO
Party for the past three years in a row. Look for us on the air!
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VHF Space Communications
The N5XU station presently has rigs capable of Amateur Radio Satellite
communication modes A, B, JA, KA, KT, and T. We have
circularly-polarized antennas with full azimuth and elevation rotation
control. We have satellite tracking software that is interfaced to
both the radio and the rotor.
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VHF Digital Communications
N5XU has a packet radio setup capable of 1200 baud (1.2Kbps) speeds on
the 2M (144-148MHz) band. The packet station is frequently used to
access the Central
Texas DX Cluster. In the future, UTARC hopes to be able to
experiment with advanced packet applications, such as
APRS, the
Automatic Position Reporting System, and possibly 915MHz
Spread Spectrum networking.
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VHF High Speed CW Meteor Scatter
N5XU is just becoming active on the high speed CW mode! Using a
sound card and PC as a specialized DSP filter, we can send and
receive CW at speeds in excess of 400wpm. Using specialized software,
bursts of code received during a meteor ping can be slowed down to
copyable speeds. We hope to begin working many new grids on
144MHz meteor scatter soon!
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VHF Noise Floor
You think you've got a high noise floor listening to the radio in your
neighborhood? At N5XU, we have lots of noise on the bands. This makes
weak signal work, especially at VHF and higher frequencies, very
difficult. Check out the images and audio samples of the bottom 10 kHz
of the two meter band we have made using AF9Y's
FFT_DSP software.
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University of Texas Amateur Radio Club N5XU
Send comments to:
utarc@www.utexas.edu
Last updated: 17 October 2006
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