We got a donation for an HF N-fed antenna and installed it a few weeks ago! The kiwi-SDR, a software-defined receiver that monitors activity on HF bands and displays it on a website as a waterfall, is running again.

We partook in the winter field day another year! We operated near the Scripps Pier once again but our setup was a bit different from last year. We used a magnetic loop antenna.

Thanks once again to everyone who came out and participated!

On November 16th we hosted a radio transmitter hunt in collaboration with the company Keysights and the IEEE chapter at UCSD. Keysights supplied us the Fieldfox Network Analyzers and gave a presentation on network analyzing, and showed us how to use the them to find the hidden transmitters amidst the noise.

It was great to have the opportunity to learn how to use industry-standard RF analyzers!

Maintaining equipment takes a lot of effort we found out. During this time we took down the broken GAP antenna to repair the bent pole and replace the wiring which we found was broken!!

Thank you everyone who came out to help!

On Saturday October 21, we volunteered to help the San Diego Transmitter Hunters with the transmitter hunt for the scouts jamboree on the air event located at Balboa Park! We’ll hid the transmitters, set up temporary antennas and assisted w/ using the equipment.

This year we tabled at the Engineering on the Green event and the CSI fair. We brought our yagi antenna and did an SSTV demo.

Thank you everyone who volunteered to table! Now people are aware that the club exist and is active.

SSTV example at the CSI fair:

Engineering on the Green:

We are setting up an on campus repeater! This is exciting news because that means that all licensed ham radio students can more actively use their handheld radios to talk to each other–all over campus!

We got the repeater donated from cal poly’s amateur radio club. As of now the repeater is transmitting great with the duplexer filtering out the repeat and transmit frequency since they are close together and the repeater doesn’t want those frequencies to interact (check antenna analyzer diagram) but we still need to work out issues with receiving signals from the handhelds.

Thank you to everyone who came and helped out! Hopefully you were able to learn a thing or two about troubleshooting and antenna analyzing.

On Saturday October 7 we partook in the collegiate QSO party from 10am – 1pm. We operated using our usual setup on SIO pier. It was very foggy that morning.

Despite our antenna quality, we managed to make a couple of contacts from places as far as Alaska!! We also got the chance to look at the antenna’s impedance matching circuit.

Thanks for coming out everyone :))

Here’s what we plan to do this upcoming quarter!! For clarity we have organized club events into different sections.

Workshops

During club meetings, we hold workshops going into the technical stuff and theory involving radios. It’s an excellent application of knowledge you learn in ECE classes. Don’t worry if you’re new to any technical knowledge–we are happy to explain things! This is also a place to share any club/personal project ideas/updates or ask for advice on radio projects. We also encourage members to present workshops when researching topics in radio and electronics they may find interesting!

Events

Want to get to know more about the club? Participate in some of our events! These are found on our calendar.

Work Days

Interested in the equipment/applications of radio? We have work days available to all UCSD students! During these work-days we usually do maintenance for our antennas on the roof of Atkinson hall. If you want to help set up or just tag along to observe what equipment we have please tag along! Since we need UCSD staff to access the roof, dates and times will vary so check on our discord for the most updated times/information for work-days.

Projects

We also have club projects going on!! More detail soon.

Saturday the 24th was our summer field day! Thanks to everyone that came out!!

We were a registered on the ARRL field day map. We used the ICOM 7300 as our base station with our antenna stretching out to the pier much like our winter field day. Once again we were a portable, battery powered station with 1 station that was open to the public as a Get-on-the-air station. We used N1MM Logger (https://n1mmwp.hamdocs.com/) as our logging software.

We started at around 11am operated until sunset. We made more contacts than our prior field day, with the amount of contacts increasing as the sun started to set and the band conditions starting to change.

During the competition, we also saw a weather balloon launching at the pier (white dot in the photo of the sky in gallery below) from another group of ham radio operators and we attempted to contact the ISS using a handheld radio and a yagi antenna since it was passing by. We managed to hear digital information from the ISS and some semblance of a human voice but weren’t able to make contact because we didn’t have enough power.