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Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter, Space, Youth Activities

A Piece Of Ham Radio History – Do You Know What This Is?

7 Comments

Every now and again one comes across a piece of Ham Radio History. Anita and I had this experience recently during our vacation in Florida. For example, we can across an artifact that we had heard about from Charle, W1CBD but had never actually seen during a recent visit to Florida.

Pretty Basic HT Transceiver
Pretty Basic HT Transceiver

This is a Motorola  MX-340.  This radio was a 5w UHF (or sometimes VHF) FM rig that was popular for commercial applications in the 1970s. You can learn more about the rig here.

A Very Special HT Transceiver

So I bet you are wondering “What makes this old HT so special? Why is it a piece of Ham Radio History?”. Well, here’s a hint – it flew aboard this:

Space Shuttle Atlantis
Space Shuttle Atlantis On Display At The Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

Yup, the little HT flew aboard the Space Shuttle.  Here’s more about our little HTs role via an excerpt  from Wikipedia :

The Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX), later called the Space Amateur Radio Experiment, was a program that promoted and supported the use of amateur (“Ham”) Radio by astronauts in low earth orbit aboard the United States Space Shuttle to communicate with other amateur radio stations around the world. It was superseded by the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. SAREX was sponsored by NASA, AMSAT (The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation), and the ARRL (American Radio Relay League).

STEM Learning Through Space and Ham Radio

Ham Radio History - SAREX
Ham Radio Abord The Space Shuttle

Ham Radio has been a STEM learning tool for a very long time. An early example of this was the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment  (SAREX) program. SAREX was a partnership between NASA, ARISS, and the ARRL. Its success in bringing Ham Radio to schools and other educational venues led, in part, to the creation of ARISS.

How All Of This Effects NARS

ARISS Crew Contact Transcript
HMS Students Talking to the ISS

And ARISS, of course, has provided NARS the opportunity to be part of bringing contacts with astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to schools here in New Hampshire, around the United States, and around the world.

There are many such examples of Ham Radio History that resulted in great things for many people. Perhaps you know of one? If so, please consider taking writing about it here on our Blog.

Fred, AB1OC

7 thoughts on “A Piece Of Ham Radio History – Do You Know What This Is?”

  1. Double check with Charlie, but I think it was he who was involved in a SAREX contact (with Owen?) between the shuttle and Nashua High School.

    It is very cool!

    BTW, I stood under the wing of that very shuttle (Atlantis) at KSC a few years ago. It was sitting in the VAB and I was with an AMSAT group that got a special insider tour. The VAB is huge!

  4. Burns,
    Very cool that you got to go inside the VAB. We went on a bus tour which stopped in front of the VAB but we didn’t get to go in. You are right, it is huge! Atlantis has its own building now at the KSC and we also got to go on a shuttle launch simulator which was also very cool.

  5. I remember very well hearing W5LFL operating from Space. He was perfectly readable on my terrestrial hand held radio. I have no doubt that I could have had a nice QSO with him with my handitalkie if there hadn’t been about 10,000 other hams also calling at the same time.

    Thanks for bringing up that memory with this article.

    Sterling, AK1K

  7. Very interesting story. The radio itself looks like the first radio I was issued as a police officer, my department ran 480Mhz (and still does) back in the late 1970s.

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