Cornell Grad Students Go Ballooning (Again)

ballooner writes "A group of Cornell University graduate students are attempting to break the Amateur Radio Ballooning duration record this weekend. The project is a continuation from last year when some other Cornell grad students broke the altitude record. The progress of the team can be tracked via their Twitter feed or by monitoring their APRS beacons. For all the HAMs out there, downlinks are available on a 30m wavelength, too."

We're not HAMs

[Mr_Perl]

It's not HAM, it's ham. It's not an acronym.

73,
ai1p

Re:We're not HAMs

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is an acronym HAm Radio is High Frequency Amateur Radio.

We put the HF in VHF/UHF

73 from the Morehead State Space Tracking Facility
KJ4HVL

Thank you for posting us!

[NS3]

Calling all amateur radio users with 30 meter recieving capability to listen on 10.1465 MHz. Downlink arrives every 10 minutes on the ten minute mark (UTC). Format of message is N2XE Alt NLat WLong Battery Ballast Please send reports to [e-mail].

Re:We're not HAMs

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Etymology of ham radio [wikipedia.org]
False etymologies

Ham-Fisted
One alternate explanation is that "ham" is a shortened version of "ham-fisted", meaning clumsy. This is a reasonable conjecture, given that all early amateur radio stations used hand-operated telegraph keys to transmit Morse code, and sending style is referred to as an operator's "fist", so someone who sends badly could be called ham-fisted. But the earliest references to "ham" use only the single word, and there is no evidence that it evolved as a truncation of a longer phrase.
"A little station called HAM"
This widely circulated but fanciful tale claims that, around 1911, an impassioned speech made by Harvard University student Albert Hyman to the United States Congress, in support of amateur radio operators, turned the tide and helped defeat a bill that would have ended amateur radio activity entirely, by assigning the entire radio spectrum over to the military. An amateur station that Hyman supposedly shared with two others (Bob Almy and Peggie Murray), which was said to be using the self-assigned call sign HAM (short for Hyman-Almy-Murray), thus came to represent all of amateur radio. However, this story seems to have first surfaced in 1948, and practically none of the facts in the account check out, including the existence of "a little station called HAM" in the first place. [9][10][11]
"Home Amateur Mechanic" magazine
In this version, supposedly HAM was derived from the initials of a "very popular" magazine which covered radio extensively. But there is no evidence that there ever was a magazine by this name.
Hertz-Armstrong-Marconi
It is sometimes claimed that HAM came from the first letter from the last names of three radio pioneers: Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Edwin Armstrong, and Guglielmo Marconi. However, this cannot be the source of the term as Armstrong was an unknown college student when the term first appeared
.
Hammarlund legend
Likely an example of corporate wishful thinking, Hammarlund products were supposedly so preeminent in the pioneering era of radio that they became a part of the language of radio. As the story goes, early radio enthusiasts affectionately referred to Hammarlund products as "Ham" products, and called themselves "Ham" operators.[12] In truth, Hammarlund was a minor and barely known company at the time "ham" started to be used.

Re:amateur students?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amusing when people who aren't a part of something and really don't know what they're talking about make statements on the internet presenting their opinions as fact. Firstly, we are in fact students. While yes, we are professionals at the same time, we are still students. The project is also worked during our off work hours. We do not get paid to take days off from our real engineering job to work this project. Secondly, we are young engineers and early career engineers. There are limits to those who can participate in the program based on the number of years with the company. Thirdly, there is no research being conducted. Any lessons learned from flights are merely passed on to the next years class. This project acts as a vehicle for future leaders at Lockheed Martin to learn the engineering process that our company practices. I can assure you the technical aspect of the project is not the primary driver. No one on the team has had any experience with high altitude balloons before and that does in fact make us amateur balloonists. My final comments are directed towards etherelithic. You seem to contradict yourself saying that we take 3 years to complete a 1 year program but then state that they work us to the bone... To me it sounds like you are either jealous or unhappy with your own academic career. Also, if the surrounding area is so depressing, go find another site to work for. No one's forcing you to stay here.