QRZ! Ham Radio 5/QRZ Ham Radio Callsign Database - Volume 5.iso/files/arrl/hiram/ltr12n20.txt

Text File | 1994-11-27 | 18.3 KB | 357 lines

The ARRL Letter
Vol. 12, No. 20
October 26, 1993

Nobel Prize: Ham, former ham share 1993 award in physics

*By Stephen Karpf, WJ2P*

     The 1993 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to Joseph
H. Taylor, K1JT, and Russell Hulse, formerly WB2LAV. Their 20-
year effort in radioastronomy began in 1974 at the Arecibo
National Observatory in Puerto Rico.
     Drs. Taylor and Hulse will share the Nobel Prize award of
$845,000. Their 1974 discovery of a binary pulsar and resulting
study over the next two decades confirmed experimentally Albert
Einstein's general theory of relativity.
     Taylor told his local newspaper, the *Star Ledger*, that he
"attributes his love for science to an amateur radio hobby he
developed as a high school student at Moorestown Friendship
Academy in Moorestown. He is still dabbling (the *Star Ledger*
said) in gadgets, often designing instruments for use on radio
telescopes."
     In 1974 Taylor, then 33, taught at the University of
Massachusetts in Amherst; Hulse was a graduate student working on
a doctorate under Taylor. Since Massachusetts-Puerto Rico
telephone service was unreliable at the time, a link using ham
gear and a phone patch kept Joe and Russell in touch.
     Joe Taylor, 52, has been a ham since 1954, when he was 13.
Joe (then K2ITP) and his older brother Hal, (then K2ITQ, now
K2PT), got thelr novice tickets at the same time. Joe and Hal
made quick progress as novices, building a crystal controlled 2-
meter AM transmitter with a 5763 in the flnal. They soon moved on
to Technician class and put together a 500 watt 4-250 6-meter rig
powered by a pole transformer and mercury vapor rectifiers tied
to a 6-over-6 element array.
     Joe and Hal earned money for ham gear by working on their
grandfather's farm overlooking the Delaware River in New Jersey.
The farm's main product was tomatoes for the Campbell Soup
Company. This farm has been in their family since 1720.
     April 1958 *QST* featured Joe and Hal setting a record in
the ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes. Their parents worried that the
boys spent too much time with ham radio, but those same parents
drove the two to hamfests when Joe and Hal were too young to
drive themselves.
     Nobel co-winner Russell Hulse, 42, got his Technician
license in the late 1960s. He enjoyed building the kits of the
day from Eico, Heath and Knight. School and other activities kept
him from studying code enough to progress to higher license
classes, he said. He later let his amateur ticket lapse but is
once again interested, he
said.
     As a youth Hulse also built radio telescopes based on
material about electronics, Yagis, and corner reflectors drawn
from *The ARRL Handbook* and antenna texts. This background was
invaluable for working the Arecibo radiotelescope, he said.
     Russell Hulse got his bachelor's degree at Cooper Union,
then became Joe Taylor's doctoral student at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst.
          Joe Taylor attributes his bent for science to his
experience with ham radio during his high school years. The
Taylor brothers worked aurora and scatter on 6 and 2 meters
during the peak sunspot years of 1957 and 1958, taking part in
the ARRL International Geophysical Year Research Project. They
received a prized Soviet QSL card for tracking Sputnik in October
1957.
     *QST* for December, 1958, published an article by Joe Taylor
on ionospheric scatter on 6 meters. The author was 17 years old.
     When Hal Taylor went off to Haverford College he and Joe set
up a 6-meter-to-220 MHz crossband duplex link to stay in touch.
Years later the Taylors linked up by ham radio when Joe went on
sabbatical to Australia.
     Joe holds a B.A. in physics from Haverford and then a PhD
from Harvard in astronomy. Hal went on to a PhD, too, and now
teaches physics at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey.
     There is a learned tradition in the Taylor family. Joe's and
Hal's father was a school teacher and principal; a relative also
named Joe Taylor founded Bryn Mawr College. Still another
relative was the first president of Haverford College.
     Joe Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered the binary pulsar in
1974 as part of an extensive, specially designed search for
pulsars using the 300-meter dish at Arecibo. The two realized
that this binary pulsar could provide an excellent opportunity to
test Einstein's theory (a process that continues to the present,
as new technologies continue to provide opportunities to verify
the theory).
     Taylor and Hulse published their Arecibo work in 1975 in the
*Astrophysical Journal Letter*. Hulse actually discovered the
binary pulsar system, but gives most of the credit to his mentor
Taylor, who for the past 19 years has made the measurements and
calculations resulting from the system necessary for proving the
theory.
     In short, the rate at which the Taylor-Hulse pulsars are
spiraling toward each other agrees with the rate predicted by
Einstein's theory to within half a percent.
     Joe Taylor today is Princeton University's James S.
McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physlcs with an
endowed chair, the highest teaching title bestowed by the
university.
     Russell Hulse's rank of principal research physicist at the
Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory is the highest research title
by the Laboratory.
     Joe Taylor won the Wolf Prize, one of the most prestigious
honors in physics, in January 1992. The Wolf Prize carries a
$100,000 award, which he gave to the Princeton Physics Department
for graduate fellowships.
          Taylor also received a MacArthur "genius" award in 1981
and the Dannie Heineman Prize of the American Astronomical
Society and American Insititute of Physics in 1980.

     *Steve Karpf is a writer of television and movie scripts and
documentaries and lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife
Patricia Karpf and 4-year-old daughter Katie. He's on all bands
3.5-440 MHz and especially likes HF DX.*

FCC PLAN WOULD ALLOW INSTANT ON-THE-AIR

     The FCC has proposed temporary operating authority to
unlicensed persons who pass the examination for a new amateur
operator license.
     The temporary operating authority would begin when the exam
is passed and an application for a license is filed, and last
until a full-term license is received from the FCC (not more than
120 days).
     The temporary operating authority would not be available to
anyone whose license has been revoked or suspended or who has
been involved in other enforcement proceedings before the FCC.
Under the proposal, the Commission also would reserve the right
to cancel such temporary operating authority without a hearing if
a need to do so arose.
     Those operating under the proposed new rules would use call
signs determined by the initials of their name and by their
mailing address. The prefix for each such call sign would be WZ
followed by a number indicating the appropriate Volunteer
Examiner Coordinator region.
     The Commission said it believes this system "would be useful
to the amateur community, yet practical to implement." The FCC
also said it was making the proposal "to better serve new
amateurs and to increase productivity in the processing of
license applications."
     The proposal, assigned PR Docket 93-267, was based on a
petition for rule-making made in July by the Western Carolina
Amateur Radio Society (WCARS) VEC of Knoxville, Tennessee (RM-
8288).
     The WCARS-VEC aired their proposal at the National
Conference of VECs in June.
     At presstime only the FCC news release, not the actual text
of the NPRM was available.
     The ARRL board of directors said in July that the
Commission's on-going program to implement electronic filing of
amateur license applications was the preferred method to
eliminate any perceived need for a temporary operating authority.
     ARRL Executive Vice President David Sumner, K1ZZ,
said that the League has always supported getting new amateurs on
the air quickly, and has offered as much encouragement as it can
to the FCC in the implementation of electronic filing, which
would allow FCC staff to make the most of the limited time
available for Amateur Radio license administration.
     The League believes very strongly, Sumner said, that "any
operating authority must stem directly from the FCC, not from
some 'middle man' private entity, even though the ARRL/VEC is the
largest such 'middle man.'
     "Many of the protections we enjoy against arbitrary local
and state regulations," Sumner said, "are the result of our being
federally licensed. It would be a serious mistake to allow this
federal status to be diluted in the interest of some short-term
expedient."
     Sumner said that the League would respond to the FCC
proposal when the full text of the NPRM is available and when
League members have had a chance to express their views on the
subject to their ARRL directors.

ARRL WASHINGTON COORDINATOR ANNOUNCES APRIL RETIREMENT

     ARRL Washington Area Coordinator Perry Williams, W1UED, has
announced that he will retire in April 1994 after 40 years of
service for the League. He is currently the staff member with the
longest tenure at Headquarters.
     Perry, just turned 65, began his ARRL career in 1954 in the
former Secretarial Department, subsequently the Membership
Services Department, when the ARRL Headquarters building was
located in West Hartford, Connecticut. He became Washington Area
Coordinator in 1980.

SHUTTLE HAMS GARNER NATIONAL PRESS COVERAGE

     The hams aboard the Space Shuttle got a nice mention in an
Associated Press story that went out Friday evening October 22.
In a story led with the astronauts' practice landings using the
shuttle's on-board computer, the AP noted that some of their very
limited free time was being used to talk to schools via ham
radio.
     "Because of the length of the mission (the AP said) and the
number and intensity of medical tests, NASA scheduled two half-
days off for the seven astronauts: Friday and next Thursday.
     "The astronauts squeezed in several ham radio contacts with
U.S. schools as they orbited 178 miles high.
     "'It's fantastic, and especially talking to young people,'
flight engineer Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, told the AP. "When we do
that, it makes us just really proud to be up here representing
all the people of the United States. To be quite honest with you,
it brings tears to my eyes."
     As of Saturday, October 23, four days into the 13-day
mission, the hams aboard STS-58 had made nearly 300
general QSO packet connects and several random voice contacts in
the U.S. and abroad, according to Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO, of the
SAREX Working Group
     Bauer said that in most cases ,full-quieting radio links
were established early in the pass and the school question and
answer sessions continued until the scheduled loss of signal.  On
October 21, the Lycee Gaston Febus school in Pau, France had a
telebridge contact with the astronauts, with Jean-Marc Dumont,
the France school coordinator, saying that over 10,000 students
throughout France listened to the contact through a national
repeater link, according to Bauer.
     Because this shuttle has been particularly successful in
hooking up with schools on schedule, times allotted for backup
schedules have become available for general contact with
amateurs.

Here's the list of schools having made a contact as of Oct. 23:

     Russellville HS, Russellville, Arkansas;
     Red Springs HS, Red Springs North Carolina;
     Alamo Heights JHS, San Antonio, Texas;
     Bloomfield School, Bloomfield, Missouri;
     Lloyd Ferguson Elementary, League City, Texas;
     Sycamore Middle School, Pleasant View, Tennessee;
     Gardens Elementary, Pasadena, Texas;
     Carl Hayden HS, Phoenix, Arizona;
     Meyzeek Middle School, Louisville, Kentucky;
     Webber JHS, Ft. Collins, Colorado.

10 years ago in *The ARRL Letter*

     The tiny Caribbean island of Grenada topped *The ARRL
Letter* on October 28, 1983. Mark Barettella, KA2ORK, then 23
years old and a student on Grenada, made news for a time as the
only source of information out of Grenada just before and
immediately following an invasion by U.S. troops in response to a
military coup. The FCC initially declared a temporary amateur
third party traffic authorization between the U.S. and Grenada
(essentially, Barettella), suspending it the day after the U.S.
invaded.
     KA2ORK/J3 was quoted around the world by wire services
desperate for word from the island due to a virtual news blackout
imposed by the Reagan administration. Barettella was later the
subject of a *QST* article on his role in the drama. Barettella
now lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
     The *Letter* noted that media attention to Amateur Radio in
connection with the Grenada crisis was "incredible."
     But the *Letter* also reported that the FCC had denied the
use of Amateur Radio, even in this extraordinary
case, for media interviews from the island, saying such amounted
to business communications. The Commission denied, among several
such requests, one from Walter Cronkite, then of CBS news
(Cronkite is now KB2GSD).
     This Commission opinion continues to the present, most
recently articulated in its new, generally more liberal, rules
concerning business communications which went into effect in
early September (Part 97.113), which prohibit:
     "any activity related to program production or news
gathering for broadcasting purposes, except that communications
directly related to the immediate safety of human life or the
protection of property may be provided by amateur stations to
broadcasters for dissemination to the public where no other means
of communication is reasonably available before or at the time of
the event."

BRIEFS

     * An advertisement for ICOM America in November *QST*
concerning a Christmas promotion by ICOM could be interpreted to
mean that ARRL memberships are being discounted through an ICOM
coupon program. An ICOM press release on the promotion also
mentions ARRL membership as a "discounted product."
     Actually, that's not the case. What the coupon promotes is
the standard new membership "extra" already offered by the
League: a free ARRL book to new members.

     * The Amateur Radio News Service is once again soliciting
club newsletters for its annual competition. The contest, open to
all Amateur Radio organizations (except general circulation
magazines and professional journals), aims to recognize "superior
performance in Amateur Radio journalism." Editors who submit one
copy of any issue of their newsletter dated July 1992 through
December 1993 will not only be entered in the competition but
will receive a rating from the ARNS judges.
     Early submissions are encouraged; for more information on
the ARNS and to enter the contest, contact ARNS President Lee
Knirko, W9MOL, 11 S. LaSalle St., Suite 2100, Chicago IL 60603.

     * Upcoming ARRL meetings: Executive Committee, October 30;
Long Range Planning, November 6; Administration and Finance,
November 13; Volunteer Resources and Membership Services,
November 13; and ballot counting for Board of Directors
elections, November 19.

     * The Radio Amateurs of Canada report "spectacular growth"
in the amateur population north of the border. On October 1 there
were 41,014 VE hams, 15,787 of them new since the introduction of
a restructured Canadian amateur service in April 1990. The RAC
also reports that nearly 72 percent of those 41,000 amateurs have
obtained "the highest
level of qualification."
     Even more encouraging to the RAC was the drop in the average
age of amateur licensees: in 1987 60 percent were over 50, while
in 1993 that percentage had fallen to 54.

     * The FCC has issued a Notice of Forfeiture for $10,000 to
David Plourde, N1IZR, of Lewiston, Maine.
     In April 1992 Plourde was given a Notice of Apparent
Liability for $10,000 for allegedly operating on the Citizen's
Band using a non-type accepted transmitter and a linear
amplifier. Given the usual 30 days to respond to the NAL, Plourde
had not done so as of October 12, 1993, the date of the Notice of
Forfeiture.

     * Former W1AW station manager Chuck Bender, W1WPR, who
retired in 1992, is recovering from heart by-pass surgery and
doing just fine, according to his successor, Jeff Bauer, WA1MBK.
Countless former Novices from the 1950s through the 1980s have
valued QSLs from W1AW signed "CR"; Chuck for years would stay
after the night shift and give newcomers the thrill of a W1AW
contact.
     Incidentally, Chuck's former boss George Hart, W1NJM (who
also began his ARRL career as a W1AW graveyard shift operator in
the late 1930s) had by-pass work a couple of years ago and looks
great. He's been in to the HQ building several times recently to
use the reference library for a historical article he's writing.

FCC honors KN4ZT

The FCC has presented a bronze plaque of appreciation to Melvin
I. Woods, KN4ZT, of Annandale, Virginia (shown above, left, with
the FCC's Michael Marcus). Woods was cited by the Commission for
what it called outstanding assistance in solving a false distress
signal case in 1992.
     The case involved an SOS on 14.313 MHz in August 1992.  The
FCC said Woods not only provided important information at the
time but also cooperated with the FCC in its subsequent
investigation.
     Woods, 58, served in the U.S. Navy from 1952 to 1976 and is
a former Senior Chief Radioman and Chief Electronics Technician.
He was first licensed as a Novice in 1953 and currently holds the
Amateur Extra Class license.
     At the October 13 award ceremony Woods also received the
U.S. Coast Guard Public Service Award from Rear Admiral William
J. Ecker.
     The case resulted in 50-year-old Jorge Mestre, ex-NS3K,
permanently surrendering his license, receiving a one-year
suspended sentence, and paying a $50,000 fine to the U.S. Coast
Guard after pleading guilty in May, 1993 to knowingly and
willfully communicating false distress signals. More information
on the case is in April 1993 *QST*, page 79.

*eof