Matthew Barksdale 4/6/2013 ENGL 1101

Discourse Community
For my discourse community, I chose the Amateur Radio club here on campus. I am a member of the Amateur Radio club at UNC Charlotte, so I thought itd be a good community to focus on. The history of the Amateur Radio club is really blurry because it was inactive for a few years. From what I understand from old members that have visited, it was always a small club and it was founded in the early 2000s. However, due to old registrations being removed from the student organizations website, I cant really verify that. Amateur Radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication. The term amateur is used to distinguish persons interested in radio technique solely with a personal aim. Amateur Radio is a cool hobby; youre able to communicate with not only people locally but also with people across the globe. Its really interesting to have a conversation with somebody (or even a group of people, its free to anyone) in California and then someone else in, say, the United Kingdom or Australia. However, it is worth mentioning a huge advantaged in amateur radio communication over, say, a cell phone. If a natural disaster occurred (like a hurricane), your cell phone would likely not work, as cell phones rely on a cell tower being readily available. However, since radios can communicate with each other directly (also called talk around), youre able to still use your radio to call for help. Its not like nobody is listening either, there are hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of registered amateur operators in the FCC database. Even then, you dont have to be an Amateur Radio operator to

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listen, the average Joe can listen if he so desires. The only limitation is transmission on Amateur frequencies. Ill start with my personal story of my involvement with the Amateur Radio club. I really had no interest in Amateur Radio until one of my friends invited me and another of my friends to just come see the amateur radio lab. I was up for anything at that point, so I did. I was a first semester freshmen, a month in, I was involved in nothing. When I got there I was greeted by the friend that invited me, Jonathan, and another guy named Dan in an extremely small office. The club had been dead for three years because the one member who had kept it active had been deployed and they were just now starting to recreate it. I really dont know the story on how they decided to recreate it, or how they even found the club, because I wasnt there and they didnt tell me. I do know I am glad they did though. It had three members total at that point. There I was, sitting in the small office that could barely fit three people, and there were four of us. Dan began explaining stuff to me that really made little to no sense to me; I dont think he knew where to end, or start. Now, Jonathan was able to make most everything he said make much more sense. Ill start with the important things though. In Amateur Radio, there are quite a few words and an unwritten etiquette. A few examples of the defined rules are not being able to swear over pretty much any radio frequency, needing a license to even speak over a nonbusiness band frequency, and giving priority to emergency transmissions and primary users (which are like hospitals or state officials.) As far as etiquette goes, a common practice would be to not speak over someone. Thats pretty common sense anyway, thats something youd practice while having a conversation with someone in person.

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That was really all that happened the night, it was fun and I decided Id come back another night, so I did. The next night I came, Dan was actually on the radio (at this time, he was on a mobile station, theyre little boxes with hand microphones coming out) talking to people in what people in Amateur Radio call a net. A net is basically a place where you can basically say hey, Im on. Theres usually a formal and non-formal part. In the formal part, youll hear announcements and people check-in and say if theyre staying for the later part (which would be the non-formal.) As with all of Amateur Radio, you can interrupt a net at any time for emergency traffic. If you havent already figured out yet, Amateur Radio is most definitely a means for emergency communications, but its also a way to talk to people all over the world. Anyway, when I came in Dan had already been through the non-formal part and they were onto the formal part where amateur operators can just talk about anything. At that particular moment, Dan was talking to members of the local Amateur Radio club (W4BFB) about what was going on at our club (W0UNC). I feel that now I should explain what this W4BFB and W0UNC jazz is. In Amateur Radio, you have to get a license issued by the FCC. There are three different licensing tiers that have their own test; they get significantly harder each time. The three classes are Technician, General, and Extra. There are tests every so often, usually every few months on a Saturday. When you go to a test, you have to complete a form for the FCC indicating that you agree to the rules and regulations of Amateur Radio operation. Shortly after that, youre given a test for the class youre testing for and providing you pass your test (80% correct), youll leave with a piece of paper indicating you passed. Really, its useless until your name appears in the FCC database, which can be checked online. Once your name is in the FCC database, youre assigned a call sign thats unique to you and your area. For example, KK4OHE is one of my friends. However,

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some choose to get a vanity call sign, which is also fine. I have a friend that is N2HAX, the Amateur Radio club is W0UNC, and the Amateur Radio club at UNC Chapel Hill is W4UNC. Either way, you have a call sign that you identify yourself by in your transmissions on every amateur transmission, along with every ten minutes that youre monitoring the current frequency. Now that thats covered, Ill move onto my story. I had gained a legitimate interest in the club and Amateur Radio in general. I was there pretty much every night and I was having fun. One night we were just talking to another member on the school repeater (a repeater basically rebroadcasts what comes in so that you can reach further) when an unfamiliar call sign popped up. We had found out that an old member lived just up the street and he came to visit us that night, and thats how we met Chris who later became our club president. As time goes on, the club matured and I took a bigger role. I started doing public relations for the club; I bought a domain (w0unc.org) for the club, and set us up a website. I also started encouraging the use of Facebook for internal affairs and promotion across friends of members and potential members. As time goes even further on, were a more established club. We had around seven members, which still isnt much compared to most clubs, but it was more members than the Amateur Radio club had had in the past three years. We had started having meetings every few weeks to discuss various things like the club repeater. We have a repeater on top of the library thats been up there for a good part of five years, and it was pretty damaged. We had obtained another repeater from a surplus that we replaced it with, but it wasnt a drop in replacement. When you replace a repeater, it has to be programmed and maintained. To do this, Chris (the club president) had called some of his friends in to assist. Its really not an easy thing to do for unknown reasons. You need a mind for how the repeater works internally to be able to program it. Thusly, we had to plan a trip to the top of the library for the good part of three to four hours of

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work. Unfortunately, I wasnt able to make the trip but I was filled in that everything went well and our new repeater was live. This was a huge step in the club because we now reached about thirty miles in every direction, compared to five previously. This was all first semester, we had got a ton done then. When second semester had come along, we had got notice via e-mail that our club room (the small office) was going to be repurposed, so we were getting kicked out. Dan and I were the main people using the room at that point and we definitely didnt have a place to put everything if we didnt get a new room. Our adviser had told us to talk to Dr. Ferguson, whos in charge of a large portion of EPIC, about possibly getting a room in EPIC, so we arranged for a meeting with him and ended up getting half of a general use laboratory. It was a lot longer of a walk from our old location in Cameron, but it was also roomier. A week or two later, we had moved in to EPIC after a ton of trips between the two buildings. It wasnt fun, to say the least. Now, this brings me to the present. Were currently looking at going to a meeting for another local club on the 30th as well as looking for massive amounts of coax to run to our new office in EPIC from the roof. Coax is used to connect radios to antennas, much like you connect your TV to the wall with coax. Once we finish this, we plan to be more active on local repeaters and become better recognized as a club. UNC Chapel Hill has an active Amateur Radio club with quite a few members, so itd be nice to get to their level eventually. I think the main reason theres not many interested in our club / Amateur Radio on campus is because they just think its people walking around talking to each on radios. Its really much more, so I think the next step is raising awareness of what actually goes on. I think another reason we have trouble getting new members is because were not advertising where it counts

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the most. Most of our members are either Computer Science or Engineering majors, personally I think this is because theyre two of the most technical majors, and Amateur Radio when you get into it you do need a mind for technical stuff. Weve been trying to appeal to everyone instead of a specific group, so maybe trying to appeal to smaller groups would be better for us. Who knows though, maybe with time well be just like Chapel Hill, maybe even better.