UT Dallas Amateur Radio Club - Station K5UTD

K5UTD has just installed a new Hygain AV-640 in time for the School Club Roundup contest (Oct 21st-25th). Hope to see yall on the air!

Big thanks to KE5GDB, KD4C, and N5AET for your support.

K5UTD is proud to announce the redeployment of the KLM antenna system. With fresh rotors and a rewired phasing harness, ham comets are ready for satellite contacts! Hope to see you on the air and in space.

-73 de K5UTD

K5UTD is back in business! We are holding regular at 7:00pm every Friday. Come check us out!

Updates:
-Removed the TH11 (see video) due to extensive damage to the elements. Will be replacing it with something better, stay tuned!
-Installed a Cushcraft R7000 for HF.

Total Antenna Setup:
-1x Diamond X50
-2x Comet GP3
-1x Cushcraft R7000

See you on the air
73 de K5UTD

This Saturday, March 4th, the Irving Amateur Radio Club is hosting their annual hamfest at the Betcha Bingo Hall in Irving, Texas. For more details check out http://irvingarc.org/index.php/home/hamfest/

Hamfest 2017 | Irving Amatuer Radio Club

This Saturday November 5th the PARKBalloon group will be launching an amateur weather balloon from Princeton. For more information visit the PARKBalloon yahoo group at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PARKBalloon/

Yahoo! Groups

Want to stay informed on club activites? Subscribe to our mailing list by sending a blank email to k5utd+[email protected]

Load your RF guns and get ready for the hunt........

K5RWK member extraordinaire, Andrew / KE5GDB, announces there will be two fox hunts this weekend, one in the Richardson area, and one in the SE quadrant of Denton County.

This will be the maiden voyage of his Pi-powered "Fox in a Box." For those unaware of foxhunting, amateur radio operators will hide a transmitter ("the fox"), and participants are to use radio direction finding techniques to find the fox. The goal is to simulate sources of interference, and practice finding the art of finding the interference. The closest thing he can liken it to is Geocaching with a compass instead of a GPS.

This Friday, Andrew will be placing the fox at about 11:00AM. It will operate on 144.5MHz, with a transmit power of 5 watts. It run until 3:00PM or until the batteries are dead. The suggested starting location is the Richardson EOC.

On Sunday, he will have the fox placed by 10:00AM in Southeast Denton County. This will also be on 144.5MHz, but have a transmit power of 35 watts. For first time fox hunters, Andrew will be hosting a brief crash course in radio direction finding. We will discuss the use of the body-nulling technique for handheld users, and I will also demonstrate how a directional antenna and attenuator can make the process even easier. He will follow up with more details about the crash course and suggested starting location when we've decided where to place the fox. The transmission pattern will be a 10-15 second audio clip, followed by a 45 second dead period.

Thanks to Andrew for the great fox hunt opportunity.

Radio club connects with international station in Russia - The Mercury Elation filled Michael Aldridge as he methodically fumbled with the amateur device. Using only spare parts from other devices and old radios, Aldridge and his club had done it: They ... Read More

Interested in becoming a SKYWARN® storm spotter? UT Dallas' Office of Emergency Management is hosting a training on the morning of September 21st at JSOM 1.118. Training is FREE and seating is limited. To RSVP email [email protected].

On June 14, 2016 the K5UTD ARC installed Amateur Radio mesh equipment on the 300’ tower at UT Dallas.

The hardware consists of 3 Ubiquiti 120 degree sector antennas and Rocket M2 radios. This hardware is mounted at 260’.

The radios are flashed with AREDN.

System Specifications

Location: 32 59’21.95”N, 96 45’01.61”W
Height: 260ft (80m)
Gain: 15dBi
Power: 27dBm (1/2 watt)
Channel: -2 (2.397GHz)
Channel Width: 5MHz
SSID: AREDN

Accessing the System

Users in Richardson, Plano, Addison, Farmers Branch, North Dallas, Murphy and Sachse should be able to access the system with a small dish that has line of sight to the tower.

Supported Hardware
http://www.aredn.org/content/supported-platform-matrix

Link Calculator
http://airlink.ubnt.com/ #/

Coverage Information
RadioMobile Predicted Coverage
http://www.k5utd.org/assets/images/UTD_AREDN.pdf

The K5UTD ARC will be installing equipment on the 300’ tower on the UT Dallas campus.

The primary mission is to move our 145.430 repeater antenna to the top of the tower. We are currently side-mounted, and have a “cone of shame” due south of the tower as an artifact of being side-mounted on the north leg. The current setup yields a cardioid-like pattern, as if a yagi were pointed at McKinney.

The secondary mission is the installation of 2.4GHz mesh equipment. The public facing radios are Ubiquiti Rockets with sector antennas. There will be 3 rockets mounted with 120 degree sectors, giving an effective coverage pattern of 360 degrees. These radios will be running AREDN. 5.8GHz radios will also be installed to provide internet to other area repeater sites and mesh installations.

The climb is scheduled for June 14th.