UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 13, Page 9
November 30, 1995
On the air; Amateur Radio Club members travel the globe

     The Amateur Radio Club, a student organization, gives its members
an opportunity to communicate with persons anywhere on the globe,
while providing a potentially vital communications link locally in the
case of a major emergency.
     One of the main missions of the student club is to provide public
service and emergency communications.
     "The club has solar panels that keep emergency batteries charged
and serve as a back-up form of communication, should power go down,"
said John Korman, club president.
     The club, which started in the mid-1960s on the campus, has a
long history of communicating with ham operators across the nation and
the world.
     Log books from the group's radio shack, located on the top of
Pierre S. du Pont Hall, date to Dec. 11, 1962. Records indicate that
in 1974, 1,300 contacts from the University were made to hams in 48
states and 90 foreign countries.
     The receiving ham operators send back postcard-sized
acknowledgements known as QSL cards.
     The club has received QSL cards from overseas, and one of the
club's interest is to get cards from all over the world.
     A freshman communication major from Rockville Md., Korman became
interested in ham radio two summers ago.
     "My grandfather was a widely known ham, and he would talk around
the world to other hams from his control station in Palm Beach Fla.,"
Korman said. "I guess I just picked it up from him."
     After taking classes twice a week during the fall of 1993, Korman
passed his first operator's test that December. The tests, given by
volunteer examiners, cover general operating practices, rules and
regulations and basic radio theory.
     There are six classes of licenses, ranging from novice to extra.
The general license designation is carried by most of the 25 members
in the Amateur Radio Club.
     Individuals holding these licenses are authorized to use two-way
radio equipment, but interested persons do not need to have their own
equipment to join the club.
     Membership in the club, which meets at 5 p.m., Thursdays, in Room
210 Evans Hall, is open to the campus community.
     Other officers include vice-president Arrmando Torres, an
engineering junior; treasurer Andrew Williams, an engineering junior;
and secretary Sean Rommel, an engineering senior. David L. Mills,
electrical engineering, serves as faculty adviser to the group.
     At meetings, which usually last an hour, group members, most of
whom are electrical engineering students, discuss the budget, give
license seminars and work on improving the radio shack.
     With the call sign wa3gay, the club is a member of the American
Radio Relay League and maintains a home page on the WorldWide Web site
at http:www.eecis. udel.edu/ ~~wa3gay. This home page gives
information about the club and links the club to other radio
organizations and clubs.
     Korman compares ham broadcasting to surfing on the Internet.
     "You can communicate locally or worldwide," Korman said. "You
meet new people, and you can talk about any topic."
     Individuals interested in joining the Amateur Radio Club can
contact Korman by calling him at 837-8799, or via e-mail at
89421@udel.edu.
                                                         -Jerry Rhodes