Amateur Radio

The ARSAT group (Amateur Radio Society at Texas Tech) is somewhat inactive at the moment due to several members having graduated or else currently involved in engineering internships. In the past, we have conducted several high altitude experimental balloon flights with successful recovery of payloads that included digital cameras and beacon transmitters for tracking and telemetry. Flights have yielded some very good pictures, such as the one below that was taken near 86,000 ft altitude as it flew south of Levelland, Texas in Aug 2005 and the next one below was taken in Spring of 2005 as a payload flew over Hale Center, Texas:

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The payloads have all been designed and built by ARSAT members, and have included digital cameras, beacon tracking transmitters, and GPS/APRS systems. We successfully recovered all payloads except for the first one, which was lost somewhere in the Childress, TX area (we think!). ARSAT group did a total of 4 flights between Spring of 2005 and Fall of 2006. Although the club is somewhat inactive, we expect to become active again with the return of some of the members from engineering internships in the Spring of 2008. The ARSAT group does sponsor an on-campus ham radio repeater on 444.100+ with 146.2 tone under the club callsign K5TTU. You can find out a little more info on that by looking up the K5TTU callsign on www.qrz.com

More info regarding the payloads can be found in the article published in CQ-VHF magazine that covers the design of one of the typical payloads flown by ARSAT: Payload article draft copy version

You can obtain more information on ham radio (amateur radio) by visiting the ARRL website at www.arrl.org License exam sessions are held once per month in Lubbock.