RadioActive News         

August 2017

 Amateur Radio related college scholarships are available

See our Scholarships page for information

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 Call the W4DFU President Doctor!

Club President Andy Milluzzi, KK4LWR, 
attains his PhD in electrical engineering

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Medical School Faculty Member Explores Amateur Radio on ham radio microwave bands for emergency communication

Dr. Gordon Gibby, MD, KX4Z, and crew successfully test a cross town microwave link for emergency communication from our rooftop antenna farm location.

Dr. Gibby is training a team in how to use amateur radio for emergency communication when all else fails!  One of his books on the subject is available on amazon.com.


 

May 2017

DXCC Challenge Award earned by W4DFU

Gator Amateur Radio Club earns recognition in the DXCC Challenge by confirming contact with over 1000 radio countries on the amateur bands.

April 2016

Gator Amateur Radio Club adds DMR Repeater

The Gator Amateur Radio Club, W4DFU, is pleased to announce the addition of a new Digital Mobile Radio Repeater in the North Central Florida area. Digital Mobile Radio (DMR), sometimes referred as MotoTURBO, ia digital communications technology.  Leveraging TDMA and 12.5 kHz of bandwidth, DMR is able to provide 2 time slots of 9600 baud digital traffic, enabling two people to talk on the repeater on the same frequency, at the same time.  The repeater is located on top of UF Health/Shands Hospital, on the South side of the UF campus. The frequency is 444.8125 MHz, +5 MHz.  DMR color code is 1 and both time slots are networked. The W4DFU DMR repeater is peer of the K4USD network and supported Talk Groups can be fond at http://K4USD.org. The repeater has backup power.  As of March 31st 2016, the repeater is operational and has a range of approx. 30 miles from a typical mobile setup.

Codeplug for programming MD380 DMR HTs

Sample MD-380 codeplug covers many of the Florida Repeaters. Open the codeplug with the Tytera CPS program.  Fill in your callsign and DMR ID number in the listed fields on the General Settings tab. All registered DMR users are included as of 3/25/2016 as contacts, plus common talk groups, and as many other USA DMR contacts that would fit. If you find any mistakes please contact andy@gatorradio.org

YouTube video stream of Gator Amateur Radio Club Info Night
 

This project was made possible by a generous group of donors working with our non-profit, Alumni and Friends of Gator Amateur Radio.  On behalf of the members of the Gator Amateur Radio Club we would like to thank John Burningham W2AXB, Ken Bryant K1DMR, Tom Power W8RED, Jim Power KJ4ASK, Bob Berntsen W2EMM, Nita Berntsen N2BBC, and Zachary Hale W4ZTH, as well as the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UF for their support of the project.  We would also like to thank UF Health/Shands and IT Security for providing the network link to the repeater, and Shands Care for providing the repeater site.  Mike Baker WA4HFR has our gratitude for helping us tune our duplexer and filters.  Andy Milluzzi KK4LWR earned kudos for spearheading the effort and putting it all together.

April 2013

The Preliminary Results for the October 2012 School Round-up (SCR) are in. W4DFU came in first place in the College Category. Look for the final published results in an upcoming issue of QST magazine, the official publication of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League).  Preliminary Results are available, preliminary results click here.

 

October 2012 W4DFU SCR YouTube Videos:

Ron (KJ4HBF) operating the contest

Mike (W4MIQ) operating the contest

Ron (KJ4HBF) and Christina (KK4MCN) operating the contest

Scott (AJ4VD) and Christina (KK4MCN) operating the contest

Andy (KK4LWR) operating the contest

 

The February 2013 SCR contest results are trickling in and although we had a smaller effort with less hours of operation it appears we will be in 3rd place for the second SCR contest of the 2012-13 school year. 

The next School Roundup contest is coming up in October 2013.  Make sure to sign up to be on our contest team and come enjoy the fun!