Cliff Murphy

Team Contact, my senior design team at the University of Idaho. We're relatively big team for senior design at 7 people. What we're doing is building an atmospheric re-entry probe for NASA that will ride aboard a terrier-orion sounding rocket in spring of 2009 as part of the SOAREX VII project. We have a wiki that gets updated with meeting minutes and a few other things I have time for @ http://teamcontact.wikidot.com/

I'm currently tossing around various winter project ideas. Since I'll be spending time in Japan again, I want to find something to work on into the late hours of the night when I'm not at the bars or traveling. So far there is a short list of things I want to do...

• Something for my Harley

• Something for my Computer
• Something involving Ham Radio

The first two items would involve Atmel micro-controllers and various sensor networks and LCD displays for output to replace analogue instruments and add new features. The last item is more of an attempt to look at various radios and see how different the prices actually are. I may just throw together a SWL station in Japan because taking advantage of reciprocity of my US license in Japan involves paying for a temporary Japanese station and transmitter license...not fun.

It has been a little while since I've posted...hopefully I'll be around more often and get a chance to show off some of the projects I've been working on for the past 6 months...

Matt Vavrosky and I talked before school got out for summer and decided that it would be nice to do some more work to the W7UQ website. Taking what VAST has with their Wikidot Wiki, we decided that it might be fun to join the boat and create a W7UQ Wiki.

It is still being populated with content, albeit slowly. Some of the content on the Wiki is set up so allow access to some of the club's published Google Docs content.

Since our club will likely become more active in the future through workshops and other organized events, we're hoping to get more content on the new wiki to give our club members more ideas for things to construct or new modes to attempt. Depending on how much content we put on there, other amateur radio operators may even reference the club's wiki for projects or other technical knowledge. This will help one of our club's goals to further knowledge in radio technology.

Please visit the W7UQ Wiki and keep in touch.

The Olympia Amateur Radio Society is coordinating the 2008 Olympus Rally, and is asking for hams to help participate on April 19th and 20th. To help them out I'm building a radio propagation model for the race venue to help them find a good location for their repeater. And hopefully I'll also be there to help with communications along with the W7UQ Amateur Radio Club.

More details of this model will come later this week, so stay tuned...