Club HAMs it up at Iowa State
I was cleaning the basement and found an old article from the Iowa State Daily (campus newspaper at Iowa State University). In my college days I was quite active in the Cyclone Amateur Radio Club – serving in various offices including President and Vice President for more years that I should have served. Anyway, in an effort to jump start the club in 1989 (membership had dwindled to 15) I took it upon myself to teach an introductory licensing class. To get some free publicity, I contacted the school paper – just to see if they were interested in talking about ham radio and letting folks know that there was a club on campus.
The result was that quite a few (I’d guess about 25) students became licensed hams. I occasionally bump into a few of these guys at hamfests. Here is the article that started it all…
Club HAMS it up at Iowa State
Iowa State Daily, September 6, 1989
Amateur radio is a hobby for everyone, not just electrical or computer engineers, said Pat Rundall, E E 3, president of the Cyclone Amateur Radio Club.
“We have a girl who’s an art major,” Rundall said. “We have a guy from India who’s a graduate student in agricultural engineering, a guy who is in pre-architecture and an English professor from Italy who just got his license.”
The club, which was established in 1915, consists of 15 members, and Rundall said he would like to see it grow.
“Our club is not real big,” he said. “The GSB won’t give us much money so we can’t advertise, so we get in a cycle of getting smaller and smaller. I don’t want to be begging for more money, we just want more members.”
Getting a license is not hard. Rundall said that children as young as five have received an operating license. For those interested in getting a license, Rundall will be teaching a class starting Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. at Carver Hall.
“You’ll learn about what frequencies to use, basic operating procedure and basic electric theory.” Rundall said.
Beginners will also learn “morse code at five words a minute, and the theory behind why some radio waves go thousands of miles, rather than across the street.”
Rundall stressed the ease of radio operations, saying thata amateur radio is only as complex as one chooses to make it, whether one wants to experiment or just talk to people around the world.
HAM, or amateur radio, offers many different activities for those involved including experimenting with television, experimenting with old tube-type radios and bouncing signals off satellites.
Among the less technical activities that club members can take part in are helping coordinate the Veishea parade and becoming international diplomats.
“People like to work in the most obscure countries in the world,” Rundall said. “HAM operators will send equipment out to the most obscure place, maybe some island 200 yards across just to talk to people there.”
Some members of the club also are involved with civil service work.
“My roommate and I are active in tornado activities,” Rundall said. “There was a tornado touchdown in the county just west of here, and we actually go out in our cars and drive around chasing tornadoes.”
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