Historic Accounts

Just a tidbit from my era. The club was non-existent through my time at UC--1957-1962. There were no other hams around; at least I never met any.

The station wasn't operated at all during that time as far as I'm aware. I got in once to see what was there but I don't remember the circumstances (I might if the statute of limitations is up).

The station at that time was on the top of the EE building with a doublet, fed with open wire line, strung between those lovely old towers.

All I remember of the equipment was a Collins 75A2 or 75A3 receiver and a Collins KW1 transmitter, I see you have a pictrure of the gear on the website--brings back old memories--thanks.Unfortunately I never got to turn the beast on.

As I recall, Professor Carl Osterbrock, Jr. was the trustee but he was inactive at the time.

In the early 1970's, the club was in the domain of the EE department, and was located in a closet (a very small back room) on the 9th floor of newly built Rhodes Hall. The station antenna was a multiband vertical mounted atop Rhodes Hall. The shack key and license were held by the EE department. Dr. Al Schiede was the advisor and the station was operated mainly by just a few EE students.

At that time, a number of hams on campus decided they would like to join the club, but felt the arrangement with the EE department was not very open to hams from other academic disciplines. A controversy ensued that made it all the way to the Student Activities Board and Student Senate, as to what group was the "real" U.C. Amateur Radio Club and to whom the W8YX call belonged. Eventually the issue was decided in favor of the upstart group and the club equipment and callsign were moved back to the penthouse on Swift Hall in October, 1975 -- not without some hard feelings on the part of a few in the EE department. The president of the "relaunched" UCARC was WB5WJO (ex ???), VP was Jay Vierling (???), and treasurer/secretary was K8YX (ex WB8HUP).

The Swift Hall shack was spruced up, a tri-band beam was placed atop one of the two rooftop towers, and a 2-meter antenna was mounted on the other, with a 40/75-meter dipole strung between them. A 160-meter sloper was strung up to one tower and a set of 10-m/2-m beams were added to operate OSCAR. The interited club equipment included complete Collins S Line (used primarily for RTTY) and Drake C Line stations. An Icom all-mode 2-meter rig and a couple of programmable scanners (NEW TECHNOLOGY!) were added. A new Drake solid state station was donated by the R.L. Drake Company, after the C-line equipment was stolen in 1980. The club benefitted by our proximity to the Drake factory and headquarters in Miamisburg, and Drake traditionally gave decent discounts to UCARC, since Greg Miller (W8XY) worked there.

The club built a repeater and put W8YX/R on the air on 147.06-, and installed it on Sander Hall. At that time, the penthouse on Sander was leased out to commercial radio interests, and a lot of commercial two-way gear and antennas were located there, so Sander was a natural location for W8YX/R. WD8BUG lived in Sander, so he was on the technical committee that maintained the repeater.

The club was quite active, both in operating W8YX and in campus events. A highlight was the "Blizzard of '78" which froze the Ohio River solid and paralyzed the city for a few days. W8YX was manned and operated 24 hours a day, working local emergency traffic and the Ohio Single Sideband Net at 3972.5 kHz. Some of the club members went to Markland Dam, where some riverboats were caught in the storm. With classes cancelled for 3 days, many club members took advantage of the opportunity to chase some DX as well!

By June 1978, the club had 30-40 members and was quite active. Club members at the time included: WD8BUG, WB8LOL, the Alversons, WD8BMK, K8YX (then WB8HUP), W8JE (then KA8AML).

Contributors: WD8BUG/9, K8YX/0 (ex WB8HUP), W8JE (ex KA8AML).

The 66/06 repeater in Cincinnati goes back almost 50 years! In the late autumn of 1974, 66/06 was conceived because a group of high schoolers in Cincinnati did not feel welcome on the two main Cincinnati repeaters, 10/70 (115/70) and 28/88. The first repeater was constructed by Charlie Baum, WB8IRB, with help from Tom Para, WA8ZAH and a few others. It originally operated on 147.60/146.40; the larger channel spacing was chosen because of the huge issues it had with inter-mod and de-sense. But it worked.  It operated on an 80 foot tower at Charlie’s parent’s home in Pleasant Ridge,  using two Ringo Rangers and eventually a 4-element J-pole.   I was there when it was first activated. Within 15-minutes of it’s first transmission, Tom Talley, W8HQQ SK, Mr. Repeater in Cincinnati, came onto our new repeater and reprimanded us kids for transmitting white noise and inter-mod across the 2-meter band! Shortly afterward, the repeater gained a cavity and was coordinated by the Ohio Area Repeater Council,  which put it on 66/06. It identified as WR8AGB.

The repeater, which was made up of an old 25W vacuum tube taxi cab radio, was enhanced with a control logic upgrade with TTL hand-built by Pat Eberle, a whiz kid form Greenhills HS who wasn’t a licensed amateur. It ran for a while on antennas on my 50-foot tower in Springfield Township That machine worked better, but was unreliable. In the summer of 1975 it smoked the old oil capacitors, which resulted in a visit to my parent’s home by the Fire Department to battle the heavy white capacitor smoke.

That broken machine was repaired and was moved to the roof of St. Xavier High School on North Bend Road in Finneytown. In 1976, when UCARC had been re-established, the club took over 66/06 because many of the guys who were involved in building 66/06 were by then studying at UC. This brought funding which allowed the club to rebuild the machine from the ground up. The new control system was designed and built by Ron Knollman (Eng ‘81) WB8HRX, who at the time was a senior at Roger Bacon HS. It consisted of discrete TTL and CMOS chips hand wired and it had elaborate functions for the era including an autopatch, a CW ID’er and CW clock and a tape recorder control (for autopatch logging). It had a characteristic “drip beep”.  It used two Sears DieHard batteries for power backup.

The new machine went live in the autumn of 1976. It was moved from 901 Swift Hall to the top of Sander Hall shortly thereafter. The new Repeater consisted of VHF Engineering transmitter/receiver modules and a Kenwood 100-watt amp. It was coupled through a 6-cavity duplexer to two separate 6dB gain Phelps-Dodge Station Masters, one for receive and one for transmit. This transmitted at 400 Watts effective radiated power, maximum for a repeater with an antenna over 200ft above the average terrain elevation. The duplexer cavities were home brewed from silver plated copper pipe and were used to reduce the inter-mod, which was a real problem in Clifton. Tom Talley. W8HQQ,  previously mentioned, tuned the duplexer for us with his precision signal generator/test set.  That repeater, which was still operational when I graduated, wasn’t exactly a “blow torch”, but the ideal location atop Sander Hall (27-stories high) made it the highest repeater in Cincinnati.

I graduated in 1980 and moved to the West Coast and lost track of the UCARC and  66/06. When Sander Hall was imploded in June 1991, 32 years ago this week, 66/06 apparently moved to neighboring Calhoun Hall, not as high, but still not a bad location either. But I have no idea what transpired since. 

I have been away from amateur radio for the past 30-years, but I have recently become active again following my retirement. I would love to see the club connect an EchoLink node to the UCARC 66/06 repeater and run a weekly net. 

73 from SE Michigan.

Roger K8YX

Eng ‘80 

Activity was brisk @ 901 Swift Hall through most of the 1990s. In 1993 and 1994, the club officers submitted hefty operating budgets to UC, and got them approved. The club purchased an IC-781, IC-970H, IC-575, 2-meter and 220 radios for packet, as well as a PC for an internet<-->packet gateway. We also obtained vertical, beam, and wire antennas to make it all work. About $35K in spending over two years!!!

The packet BBS went live on 3/17/1994 and at packet's "peak" had 2-meter, 220, 432 (19K2 speed), 20-meter, telephone, and internet access.

The W8YX repeater was active for most of this time -- except when someone "borrowed" it in December 1994, and whenever the humidity was high in the radio room on top of Calhoun (repeater "stuck" until we reset it by visiting it.)

The KW-1 sat idle, needing a lot of rehab. The 75A-3 worked though.

Starting in 1993, and continuing through at least 2006, the club provided communications (with help from friends) for the Cystic Fibrosis Run Like Hell. We also provided help for the Diabetes walk in Clifton in 1994 and 1995. UCARC partnered with Warren Co. RACES/ARES for the Diabetes Tour d'Cure in 1995 through 1999. We also provided packet infrastructure for QCEN during the 1996 CVG Airport Mass Casualty Incident drill.

The club hosted a VE session in February, 1995.

The club hosted round-the-clock efforts for the ARRL DX Phone Contest in 1997-1999, with the 1997 effort being interrupted by a Red Cross callup for some club members -- the first weekend of the "Great Flood of '97".

We got tired of how the 901 Swift room looked, and painted it and patched the drywall (thanks, Rob) ourselves, without the help of UC "facilities".

"The couch", the complete ****inator and the debate it stirred, 4 Uniform 2 Papa November, "stickball" on the Swift Roof (sorry if we hit you), people leaving the windows open (the windows directly above the radios mentioned above), defrosting the freezer, the first warm day of the spring, cartoons on the bulletin board, and fire inspections were all important parts of the UCARC experience.

The club had a net, the RARE net...which spawned a more informal net, the HAIR net. The HAIR net drew even the Cincinnati amateur radio "elite", especially when the topic was Dick Vitale.

And there was the one morning that a club member tried to have a conversation with the courtesy tone on the repeater...

Club members during the 1993-1999 period: N8NVF, W8YFS (ex KG8PV ex N8UPG), N8UPD, N8RVP, KB8ITU (sk), KB8WYA, K8DTI (ex KB8VRZ), N8TFD, KB1IJN (then N8VUO), DL1SDA, DL1AKE, KB8WTN, KB0SLY, KB8IZE, KB8JDP (sk - former advisor), KF8WZ (advisor), WX8N, WB4DHC, WC0K, KC8ASX, KF4MWN, KC8MAI, I know I'm missing many...

At this time the club was open to all students under the domain of the Student Organizations and Activities office. The club advisor was Dr. Stephen Liggett professor of Medicine and Molecular Genetics. The club president was Dave Stuart, KB0SLY, till November 2001, and then Rick Altherr, KC8APF. The other officers included Mark Haffner KC8KHL (VP), Kate Lindner (Secretary), and Brian Sellers K8CNW (Treasurer). In 2001 the club was informed that it would have to move out of the 9th floor of Swift Hall during building renovation as part of the Mainstreet project.

In 2001 the club began looking for a new Advisor, and in 2002 settled on Dr. John Franco, Associate Professor in the ECECS Department.

The club soon found that the plans for the building included the removal of the two towers and conversion of the club room into a HVAC room. Repeated attempts were made to get the plans for the building changed. Several students and Alumni wrote letters to the architect's office and board of directors. At the end of 2001 UCARC was moved to a small office in the 6th floor of Dabney Residence Hall. Two short posts on the roof were provided for antenna mounting and the club resumed a limited operational status. Antennas included a 2m/70cm vertical, a 2m vertical, a 70cm yagi for packet operations and an 80m dipole strung the length of the roof at a height of 2 to 4 feet. Larger club antennas and a large portion of the club library and furniture were put into storage in the Reading Road facility. The towers were removed from Swift Hall in May of 2002. Swift Hall reopened in 2004 with no room for the radio club.

At this time the club still did not have a promise of a new location and the architect's office was unresponsive. In September of 2003 the club began working with the College of Engineering and the ECECS Department to find a new home. Department head, Dr. Mantei, and club advisor, Dr. Franco, proposed several locations and put the club in contact with Rick Koch, Director of Engineering Facilities. Several more locations were proposed and investigated, however, final approval was needed from the architect's office, and little progress was made. In 2004 Dr. Carter became department head of ECECS. The department continued to help promote the club and search for a location. As of May 1st 2005 the club still did not have a new location, but prospects were looking good for 1000 Rhodes Hall.

Club members during this period included: KC8APF, KC8KHL, Kate Lindner, K8CNW, N9WIV, KC8AOT, Johnathan Stewart (KC8ONW), James Salyers, WB4DHC, KC8BTJ, KC8SVF, KD8ARC, KD8AFG, KD8AFF, KD8AQZ, KD8AQS, KG4OTW, KD8AQX, Coleman Kane, KB8QBW, KC8UEK, and KC8RNA

UCARC has since been moved to 911 Old Chem and given roof access. We're getting a 40' tower to place atop our room and we'll begin using the Collins again. Presently only one officer has an HF license, but we aim to change this. Our club equipment has been expanding greatly and we've begun helping out with communications on and off campus for various events: ACM's internation programming contest, Flying Pig Marathon, and Student Senate's NightWalk program.