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Interview With Bryce, KB1LQC & Brent, KB1LQD Of RITARC | Part 1 Of 2
I met Bryce, KB1LQC through Twitter and immediately connected with his CollegeARC project. There are visionaries and leaders, when the attributes of both combine, the result is innovation in addition to a map into our future.
Bryce and Brent, KB1LQD who are twin brothers, are on the adventure of a lifetime while chartering unknown territory toward the middle of our century.
Share with us how you got your start in ham radio?
We both became involved in amateur radio during our Sophomore year of high school in the Fall of 2004. Prior to that Brent and I were constantly tinkering with things and fascinated by mechanical and electrical systems.
Brent obtained a Gordon West study guide for the technician class exam around 2003 however we never got around to using it to obtain our license. My dad who was licensed a year or so after we were with the call sign KB1MGI is a firefighter/EMT. Consequently, throughout our whole lives we have always been around fire/police scanners which instilled an interest in radio communications to some degree.
Then in the summer of 2004 we met our neighbor, W1XH, who gave us a few QST’s and some inspiration. After that my dad bought us the ARRL Technician study guide and a CW key with a practice oscillator. That Fall I had my Technician class license with a CSCE for code credit and Brent had his Technician license (CSCE for code credit came a month later for him). Both of us upgraded to Generals the following December and one year to the day of my call sign being issued, I was awarded an Extra class radio amateur licensed in the Fall of 2005.
So yes, I managed to do all three in exactly one year!
Tell us about your high school amateur radio club experience?
Amateur radio is not our only hobby. In fact, Brent and I are avid mountain cyclist and pretty active members of the New England Mountain Bike Association, NEMBA, when we are home in Massachusetts. Brent and I resurrected the Chelmsford High School Mountain Bike Club during our Sophomore year of high school, just as we were getting into amateur radio. One of the advisers for that club was David Steeves who teaches physics at CHS. Long story short, after riding with him he also became interested in the hobby and he too got his license around 2005 obtaining the call sign KB1MKW.
Starting fresh in the Fall of 2006 Brent and I were working with Dave as our advisor to start the Chelmsford High School Amateur Radio Club (CHSARC). Shortly thereafter the club was awarded the call sign KB1NAY and operated with our own personal equipment for several months. We obtained and won the ARRL “Big Project” grant in 2006 which gave our club several thousand dollars worth of equipment including a Yeasu FT-897, Cushcraft R-6000 vertical antenna, and some other odds and ends to make the station work.
The least I can say is that the ARRL “Big Project” was an amazing opportunity for the club.
Brent and I ran the club until we graduated in 2007 and headed for the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). KB1NAY is still operating to this day but with the vanity call sign N1CHS which I helped them obtain in the Fall of 2009. I am proud to say that after visiting the school during breaks from RIT, N1CHS had about 10 members in the 2009-2010 academic year.
One of the most important aspects of starting the high school club was being able to adjust from the traditional outlook on ham radio to a point of view of the hobby from a perspective more in line with today’s high school mentality. We adjusted to catch the interest of the students and it worked. We’ve since taken those ideas to RIT and they also seem to be working quite well.
One of the reasons N1CHS is still going strong, besides being managed by Dave KB1MKW, is that neither Brent nor I lost communications with the club. We attend meetings when we are home and always check in to see if they need something.
Who influenced your zeal for home brewing equipment?
Home brewing equipment was the main interest in obtaining our amateur radio licenses. Both of us would constantly be taking things apart though we had no idea how to put them back together at the time but that didn’t matter. I vividly remember having an old rototiller where the engine had died when I was really young. My parents let me take it apart. My dad literally gave me some tools and I just took the one piston four stroke engine apart. It may not have been electrical but I was absolutely fascinated by seeing the parts move and understanding that all those parts made up a much larger system which propelled the machine.
My first contact in amateur radio was made on a home brewed CW transmitter for 40 meters. It was a design called the “Michigan Mighty Mite” and was simply a Pierce oscillator attached to an antenna. It operated in the Tech-Plus CW band and put out about 500 mW.
I used a borrowed Icom receiver from one of my dads fire/EMT radio friends. I laugh at it today but at the time we didn’t even have coaxial cable. I used a CAT5 LAN cable with all eight wires soldered together as transmission line to the antenna. Oh’ the novel days of being inexperienced! Furthermore, Brent and I always joke that we didn’t obtain access to a VHF rig or any repeaters until after we had our General licenses. We just couldn’t afford it at the time.
What factor(s) propelled your decision to obtain a degree in electrical engineering?
Hands down it was amateur radio for both of us. Without being given the opportunity to build a radio or related electronics and then using it to make a contact I doubt the field of electrical engineering would have caught my attention. Being able to tinker with electronics in the hobby was a defining experience for both Brent and I. We also met numerous engineers in the hobby where we were able to obtain a better understanding of technical fields.
I must joke that neither of us will claim to be good at math, neither of us are one of those students where the guidance counselor in high school suggested to go into engineering! Quite honestly every time we walk into the cooperative education office here at RIT and show them our resume they always ask us why we are not Electrical Engineering Technology majors.
The difference being that both of us have an incredible amount of experience with hands on aspects of electronics. Amateur radio even helped us obtain an internship in the microwave engineering field during high school. We may struggle at the math but no matter how tough it can get, both of us are passionate enough to never give up.
Electrical engineering is what we want to do.
Tell us about your role as Vice President of the Rochester Institute of Technology Amateur Radio Club?
As Vice President of K2GXT I am responsible for odds and ends that they President (Brent) needs to get done as well as serving as the projects manager. Honestly, Brent and I work closely together so the lines between President and Vice President are often blurred between us since we both operate on the same wavelength (pun intended!).
During the 2009-2010 academic year I decided that the club should put a huge effort into the Imagine RIT Innovation and Creativity Festival which was held on May 1st 2010, it was a huge success for K2GXT; we had an incredible amount of interest in amateur radio from a large number of the 32,000 visitors to the event.
Mind you, 32,000 people attended the festival at RIT from just 10AM until 5PM. It is safe to say that we were busy!
73 from the shack relaxation zone.
P.S. Part two will follow sometime tomorrow afternoon.
Project Future Of Ham Radio | Rochester Institute Of Technology Amateur Radio Club
They are the Rochester Institute of Technology Amateur Radio Club and from small beginnings a future is shaped.
73 from the shack relaxation zone.
P.S. Surfing the ionosphere this weekend and post-storm conditions continue challenging my low-power, low-profile station. It feels like paddling into double overhead while the waves are breaking top-to-bottom.
Report on my QRSS signal from Michigan
Thad, AJ8T, sent me a nice report on my 30m 160mW QRSS signal. A screenshot of what he received is above and clearly shows the ‘a3stl’ part of my signal. In his e-mail he reported
It was received about 20:40Z on May 26,2010 using Spectran, a Signalink interface, a Yaesu FT-897d and an 80m horizontal loop up about 10m fed by ladder line. I’m located in Sturgis, Michigan (grid EN71hs) half way between Chicago and Detroit.
My transmitter has been running continuously now for a few weeks and it is good to see how stable it is. For those readers unfamiliar with QRSS those frequency changes that give the CW are about 5 or 6 Hz steps. Which gives an idea of the stability, as well as the challenge to detect these signals (the 30m QRSS ‘band’ is just 100Hz wide).
He also reported that he too will be putting a QRSS transmitter on the air soon. I look forward to seeing AJ8T’s signal on the grabbers.
Thanks for the report Thad!
Morse USB keyboard
This is a really cool little project.
It isn’t clear what it does from the picture, but it’s a device that makes a Morse key look to a computer like a standard USB keyboard. So you can type into your word processor, blog or whatever by sending Morse.
I want one of these. If I had to type all my blog posts using Morse I’m sure I would really get my speed up! Shame it isn’t available as a kit.
Baffled
I don’t know if it’s just my advancing years but increasingly I find new technology and the direction it is going in completely incomprehensible. Phones are becoming so complicated that they can now only be understood by teenagers. But the topic of today’s rant is computer sound cards.
One of the reasons I prefer a desktop or tower PC in the shack is that you can install additional soundcards in them. This allows you to interface with one or more radios for digital modes, EchoLink and so on and still have normal computer sound available. Yes, you could do this with a laptop and external USB soundcards. But it has always seemed to me to be better RF practise to have the digital electronics inside the nice tightly screened metal PC case with only screened cables going from the PC to the radio. USB looks like a radio amateur’s nightmare with these often unscreened cables carrying high speed data and the USB devices usually in completely unscreened plastic cases radiating digital hash everywhere. In fact I would not be surprised to find that the proliferation of USB devices is mainly responsible for the increasing HF noise environment that one day soon will result in my giving up HF altogether.
Once upon a time you could buy a 16-bit soundcard for £15 – £20 ($25 – $30) that was more than good enough for computer sound or amateur digimodes. But one of the advances in computer technology has been the disappearance of PCI slots. The new computer I bought a few months ago, to my surprise, turned out to only have something called PCI Express slots, for which the cheapest sound cards available cost around £70 ($100.)
The specifications of these “bottom end” PCI Express soundcards are way above what I need to either listen to computer sounds and video soundtracks on my PC speakers or decode PSK31 signals. Why do ordinary computer users need 24-bit 96kHz recording or a direct digital input? What on earth is “sound output 7.1” and why do I need three or four different speaker outputs (the presence of which make finding the socket for the PSK31 TX audio by trial and error while groping round the back of the PC in the dark about as likely as winning the lottery?)
I understand that some people might want these features but those who didn’t want them weren’t forced into buying them because more basic products were available. Who decided the simple, stereo 16-bit soundcard without 3D special effects such as computers had for years was no longer needed by anybody?
What frequency standard?
I think the frequency readout of my IC-910H is out by about 400Hz and unfortunately I can’t receive any accurately calibrated beacons like GB3VHF to set it with. I also like to check my K3’s calibration from time to time and would like to take advantage of the option to lock it to a 10MHz frequency standard should Elecraft ever provide it as originally promised. So I decided to have a look on eBay for frequency standards.
There seem to be a number of ex-equipment 10MHz rubidium frequency standards at prices starting from around £50 – which is about the right level for me – available from China. For a bit more you can have a GPS locked time and frequency standard, though where time is concerned the NTP software is good enough for me. There is also a smart looking Quartzlock off-air frequency standard, though that is a bit outside my price bracket for this and would take up a bit too much space for the G4ILO shack.
I don’t know anything about this equipment and aren’t sure if any of these things would be any use to me. The rubidium frequency standard pictured has a frequency adjustment setting which surely defeats the object. If you need to calibrate it against something else then that’s no use to me. I want something of known accuracy to calibrate my radios against. Perhaps the GPS type would be more useful?
Does anyone know about these things?














