
Olin College Amateur Radio Club
(OCARC)
About OCARC
Olin Collegiate Amateur Radio Club (OCARC) was an old Olin club that was founded years ago, but was rebooted the year of 2019. Amateur radio, or ham radio, is a service and hobby that brings people, electronics, and communication together. Instead of using a cell phone or a computer to communicate, Hams use radios, antennas, and specific frequencies to talk to each other across the globe. If you have a radio and a license, you can communicate with anyone.
Our club wants to take our love for this hobby and create a ground station at Olin that can be used to participate in contesting, communication, receiving data from and transmitting to satellites, and more. As of now, we have build several antennas and are learning to use our software defined radio (SDR).
Boston Marathon
It's become a tradition for OCARC members to volunteer their HAM skills at the Boston Marathon. Read about their experiences from past events here.
Projects

In order to learn how antennas work, we decided to build and test four simple omnidirectional eggbeater antennas: two 2m (VHF) antennas and two 70cm (UHF) antennas. The 2m band and the 70cm band are very common ham and small satellite bands and let us transmit and receive on the frequencies in those bands. This project allowed for both groups to get hands on experience with creating antennas as well as learning the process of testing antennas.
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OCARC conducted extensive research before building our ground station. After comparing many types of radios, antennas, and ground station set-ups, we decided an SDR and a directional antenna best fit our ground station needs. We decided that the best way to test this completely new setup was to build and test four simple omnidirectional eggbeater antennas. We chose to use an SDR because it is easily programmable and allows us to simulate a radio using our computers. Eventually, our ground station will be able to contact other ham stations as well as satellites, space stations, and more.

Whitepapers
Club Members

Zach Sherman
KC1NXK

Linda Vanasupa
KC1QZN

Kristtiya Guerra

Caitlin Coffey
KC1SAZ

Regan Mah
KCIMGR

Rohil Agarwal
KD2YPP

Grant Miner
KN6WLO

Ally Bell
KC1QJL

Gia-Uyen Tran
KI5TGE

Kate McCurley
KC1ROQ

Stephanie Cho
KN6VBK

Daniel Deng

Bernard Adjei-Frimpong
KC1SBD

Declan Ketchum
KF0KTN

Lilo Heinrich
KC1SAL

Braden Oh
KI6VCC

Andrew Mascillaro
KE2AHM

Abby Omer
KC1SBB

CJ Hilty
KC1QNF

Lillian Shoemaker
KE8VGY

Ben Eisenbraun
KC1ROM

Meredith Alley
KQ4EDE

Whitney Lohmeyer
KC1LGC

Argyris Kriezis
KC1MYK

Alex Butler
KC1SAY

Sree Chalimadugu
KC1RRP

Isabel Serrato
KC1QDP

Aydin O'Leary
KC1SBA

Lila Smith
KC1RAZ

Phillip Post
KM4VNZ

Kat Canavan
KC1ROG

Brooklyn Wakefield
KC1ROI

Vaughn Rinehart
KC3VBR

Jon Tse
KC2WAC

Jerry Goss
KN6WTU

Aditya Sudhakar
KC1SBC

Laurel Rodriguez-Mitton
AJ6AS

Tolulope Oshinowo
KC1QDO

Lauren Xiong
KC1SBE

Katie Fleming
KI5WNX

Brooke Moss
KC1QDN

Andrew Phillips
KC1ROH

Ethan Chen
KC1ROF
Club Alum

Annie Chu
KC1QAV

Sparsh Bansal
KC1MGP

Thomas Jagielski
KF0HCR

Megan Ku
KC1QDG

Pranavi Boyalakuntla
KC1OIB

Anusha Datar
KC1IQU

Bryce Mann
KD9TZG

Alissa Tinney

Allison Busa

Jenna Ocheltree

Cali Wierzbanowski
KC1KNQ