AMRAD Accomplishments

Over the years, AMRAD has been instrumental in advancing amateur radio technology and in telecommunications for persons with disabilities.

Here are our accomplishments:

Educational Activities:

Sponsored and/or hosted three ARRL Digital Communications Conferences in the Washington, DC area.
Convened 1999 AMRAD Technical Symposium in Falls Church, VA.
Authored the ARRL's Spread Spectrum Sourcebook (used as a reference in the IEEE individual learning course).
Contributed to the spread spectrum material in the ARRL Handbook.
Hold monthly meetings devoted to presentations on technical subjects (recently including multimedia, radio local area neworks, software defined radio, ultrawideband technology and digital broadcasting).
Meet weekly at Saturday luncheons to exchange ideas and project assistance.
Continue to publish the authoritative AMRAD Newletter as a source for experimental information.
Provided judges for Northern Virginia science fairs.

Made the first HF contact on packet radio on the east coast of the USA.
AMRAD/W4RI and K2SZE aired first amateur spread spectrum transmissions on HF.
Tested police radars for susceptibilty to amateur transmitters.
Operated low-frequency (LF) transmitters in Northern Virginia under an FCC experimental license.
Jointly with the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) and the Deutscher Amateur-Radio-Club (DARC), AMRAD sponsored competiton for first successful amateur transatlantic transmissions at LF.
AMRAD/AA4HS operates a radio receiver remotely controlled via the Internet.

Developed the AX.25 amateur packet protocol which was adopted by AMSAT and standardized by ARRL Digital Committee.
Built and operated a landline computer bulletin boards believed to be the second in the USA.
Built and operated one of the first radio bulletin boards in the world.
Designed and constructed the AMRAD-OSCAR 27 satellite payload in conjunction with EYESAT.
Designed the popular AMRAD/KØBRA active antenna published in QST.
Developed the Computer Assisted Relay System used by many statewide deaf TTY relay services.
Developed the first BBS based ASCII-to-TTY converter ("TEDIVERTER") for deaf telecommunications.
Contributed to FCC rules on spread spectrum and conducted spread spectrum testing with the FCC.

Provided safety communications for cross country races.
Operate the W4CIA (formerly WD4IWG) FM repeater on 147.81/147.21 MHz near Tysons Corner, VA for use by experimenters.
Operated the Handicapped Educational eXchange (HEX) BBS for use with ASCII and TTY modems.
Provided Internet access for the Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons.