Cornell Grad Students Go Ballooning (Again) 58
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 (Score:5, Informative)
It's not HAM, it's ham. It's not an acronym.
73,
ai1p
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"I have a ham radio."
Re:We're not HAMs (Score:4, Funny)
I have a ham sandwich
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She split her cherry on my ham.
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[citation needed]
Wikipedia webpage reference or it didn't happen.
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False etymologies
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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
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No, not making it up, its in the HAm guide out by the AARL, I work on this equipment as well as a 21 meter space tracking dish daily. I know what I'm talking about. Mod it flame bate, DO IT!
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No. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio
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File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat [jgpandya.com] - View as HTML [google.com]
HAM, though not an acronym, is used and written with capital letter to show the respect and in remembrance of the three scientists who have contributed in
Full relevant quote:
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"HAM, though not an acronym, is used and written with capital letter to show the respect and in remembrance of the three scientists who have contributed in ..."
Right. That's complete bull-puckey. Fiction. Made up.
If you go back ten or twenty years ago, you'll find very few (if any) spellings of ham in capital letters. It's not an acronym, it's not meant to honor anyone, it's just a word. Specifically, if you go read some old QST magazines from the 40s, 50s, or 60s you'll see plenty of references to ham
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http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/history.html#ham [arrl.org]
"Ham: a poor operator. A 'plug.'"
That's the definition of the word given in G. M. Dodge's The Telegraph Instructor even before radio. The definition has never changed in wire telegraphy. The first wireless operators were landline telegraphers who left their offices to go to sea or to man the coastal stations. They brought with them their language and much of the tradition of their older profession.
In those early days, spark was king and every station occupied the
Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_emergency_communications [wikipedia.org]
Recent examples include the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the 2003 North America blackout and Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, where amateur radio was used to coordinate disaster relief activities when other systems failed. ...
The largest disaster response by U.S. amateur radio operators was during Hurricane Katrina which first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane went through Miami, Florida on August 25, 2005, eventually strengthening to Category 5. More than a thousand ham operators from all over the U.S. converged on the Gulf Coast in an effort to provide emergency communications assistance. Subsequent Congressional hearings highlighted the Amateur Radio response as one of the few examples of what went right in the disaster relief effort.
You won't see them paddling down the street or trudging through snow, but converging by the thousands to coordinate the emergency efforts of those who are paddling and trudging.
They are invaluable in times of emergency and crisis. Until local law enforcement has an international network of volunteer radio operators it will never match the resources of HAMs. If you've been through many natural disasters chances are you should be thanking the
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You, Sir/Madam, are a reason why I continue to read AC posts. It's the joys of reading little gems like yours that makes it worth reading at 0. Thank you for writing.
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Leave emergency communications to local law enforcement, kthanksbye, and stop trying to justify your love for anachronistic technologies.
You're an idiot. I happen to know several ham operators who traveled to New Orleans during the disaster with the specific aim of assisting in communications. They worked with what they had, including setting up alternate power sources (read: generators powered by their own fuel, hauled on trailers behind their own trucks). They're never the primary means of communications, but they're damned valuable people when nothing else works. Let's just set aside the fact that their efforts were unpaid and under-appre
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Funny... local law enforcement keeps on coming to us.
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So tell me, how often has that happened?
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Funny you should say that -- the one ham radio friend I have is a fag. I met him through an online gay social networking site, and he introduced me to the local 2600 chapter. Funny how that works.
In general, though, I'd have to say that no, ham radio operators AREN'T fags: they're not pretty enough to be.
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Until tomorrow, when the meaning goes back to business as usual.
- Current Cornell student
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- Another Cornell Student
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-Cornell '01 grad...
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It was posted at 8:00 on a Sunday night--what were you hoping for?
Not just "because" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty cool of Lockheed Martin to sponsor the project -- being that high up in a balloon has to be the experience of a life time.
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being that high up in a balloon has to be the experience of a life time.
A pity the balloon is unmanned then.
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A pity the balloon is unmanned then.
Unmanned, you say. Then it's only an oon.
Up, up and away (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be really neat is an ATV [wikipedia.org] downlink on UHF so we could watch it. I've always wanted to see the transition where the blue sky disappears.
FYI, APRS [wikipedia.org] is pretty much text messaging for amateur radio. The most popular use is reporting your position (which is what the balloon does), but it's an easy way to pass short digital messages....or even send an email if you're near one of the gateways.
Off topic, but semi-related because of APRS: AT Golden Packet Event [aprs.org]. An APRS packet is relayed up the entire Appalachian Trail.
Disclaimer: IAAH (I Am A Ham). dit-dit.
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I've always wanted to see the transition where the blue sky disappears.
Maybe if enough people see it answers to the question "why can't you see stars during the day?" will finally get better.
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What would be really neat is an ATV downlink on UHF so we could watch it. I've always wanted to see the transition where the blue sky disappears.
Check out Cosmocam's [cosmocam.com] YouTube feed [youtube.com]. It's a project of the CSBF [nasa.gov] to allow people (mostly students) to interact with a camera aboard a high altitude balloon. In their case, the balloons can go much higher and longer than Cornell's. CSBF's balloons can reach 120,000 feet (37 km) and have flown for >50 days.
Thank you for posting us! (Score:5, Informative)
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maybe... should have sold some radio ads?
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30 meters is cw only...
30m not CW only (Score:2)
Ummmm. No.
30m (as defined for the US and Canada) allows pretty much any narrow-band mode; not just CW. No voice or SSTV, but you'll find plenty of RTTY and other digital modes on 30, especially towards the higher part of the band.
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meh.
just capture the signal to a uncompressed file and do signal analysis on it. We hams have enough computer filters to run it through... and dont forget about gnuradio.
If anything, its probably psk31, rtty, or cw. And there's only a handful of decent digital modes. You could do the processing in 1 minute, tops for every mode.
Highest Baloon Flight--Can't beat Poe (Score:2)
This is a good story [wikipedia.org]. Poe was a smart guy. Verne ripped this one off of him a few years later, though.
amateur students? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really cool and all, but these guys are being paid to do this by an aerospace company (Lockheed) and are graduate researchers. Calling them amateurs and students is slightly insulting (I realize the amateur part is just the way these ballooning things are described, to separate them from NASA, but it's still an unfortunate word in this case).
These guys need to present themselves as professionals for their own sake. Part of the reason school administrators do stupid things like raise grad student tuition and cut grad student benefits is because they do not realize how much on-campus research is done by graduate students. I spent several years when I was in grad school trying to explain to deans, chancellors, and regents that graduate "students" were not just older undergraduates (some of these people were shocked to find out I only took classes for 2 out of 6 years of grad school... they had no idea what science and engineering graduate students do all day).
This kind of stuff drives me crazy. These guys did a great thing, and to play it off as "look what this group of students did" implies this was a small side project done in their spare time, or something a more senior person taught them to do, when this was well funded research which will likely go toward their degrees (and obviously has not been done before). Incidentally, Lockheed Martin's press release [lockheedmartin.com] uses the phrases: young engineers, early career engineers, and employees. The word "student" is not present, only referenced by "employees' graduate studies." They get it.
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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
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There is research being done. To claim that there is not during a discussion of how your work was record breaking is a flat out stupid statement. The knowledge transfer process you describe is research. Whatever the official purpose of the project is, academia (which is who I am talking about, and of which I am part) sees this as just another research project.
For the purposes of this activity, you are not students. What you are doing is bringing prestige (and money, either from Lockheed or someone else)
Weather Ballooning at NOAA (Score:1)