The ARRL Letter

Vol. 12, No. 20

October 26, 1993


Nobel Prize:

Ham, former ham share 1993 award in physics	


*By Stephen Karpf, WJ2P*


	The 1993 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to 

Joseph H. Taylor, K1JT, and Russell Hulse, formerly WB2LAV. 

Their 20-year effort in radioastronomy began in 1974 at the 

Arecibo National Observatory in Puerto Rico.

	Drs. Taylor and Hulse will share the Nobel Prize 

award of $845,000. Their 1974 discovery of a binary pulsar 

and resulting study over the next two decades confirmed 

experimentally Albert Einstein's general theory of 

relativity. 

	Taylor told his local newspaper, the *Star Ledger*, 

that he "attributes his love for science to an amateur radio 

hobby he developed as a high school student at Moorestown 

Friendship Academy in Moorestown. He is still dabbling (the 

*Star Ledger* said) in gadgets, often designing instruments 

for use on radio telescopes."

	In 1974 Taylor, then 33, taught at the University of 

Massachusetts in Amherst; Hulse was a graduate student 

working on a doctorate under Taylor. Since Massachusetts-

Puerto Rico telephone service was unreliable at the time, a 

link using ham gear and a phone patch kept Joe and Russell 

in touch. 

	Joe Taylor, 52, has been a ham since 1954, when he 

was 13. Joe (then K2ITP) and his older brother Hal, (then 

K2ITQ, now K2PT), got thelr novice tickets at the same time. 

Joe and Hal made quick progress as novices, building a 

crystal controlled 2-meter AM transmitter with a 5763 in the 

flnal. They soon moved on to Technician class and put 

together a 500 watt 4-250 6-meter rig powered by a pole 

transformer and mercury vapor rectifiers tied to a 6-over-6 

element array. 

	Joe and Hal earned money for ham gear by working on 

their grandfather's farm overlooking the Delaware River in 

New Jersey. The farm's main product was tomatoes for the 

Campbell Soup Company. This farm has been in their family 

since 1720.

	April 1958 *QST* featured Joe and Hal setting a 

record in the ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes. Their parents 

worried that the boys spent too much time with ham radio, 

but those same parents drove the two to hamfests when Joe 

and Hal were too young to drive themselves.

	Nobel co-winner Russell Hulse, 42, got his 

Technician license in the late 1960s. He enjoyed building 

the kits of the day from Eico, Heath and Knight. School and 

other activities kept him from studying code enough to 

progress to higher license classes, he said. He later let 

his amateur ticket lapse but is once again interested, he 

said.

	As a youth Hulse also built radio telescopes based 

on material about electronics, Yagis, and corner reflectors 

drawn from *The ARRL Handbook* and antenna texts. This 

background was invaluable for working the Arecibo 

radiotelescope, he said.

	Russell Hulse got his bachelor's degree at Cooper 

Union, then became Joe Taylor's doctoral student at the 

University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

		Joe Taylor attributes his bent for science 

to his experience with ham radio during his high school 

years. The Taylor brothers worked aurora and scatter on 6 

and 2 meters during the peak sunspot years of 1957 and 1958, 

taking part in the ARRL International Geophysical Year 

Research Project. They received a prized Soviet QSL card for 

tracking Sputnik in October 1957. 

	*QST* for December, 1958, published an article by 

Joe Taylor on ionospheric scatter on 6 meters. The author 

was 17 years old.

	When Hal Taylor went off to Haverford College he and 

Joe set up a 6-meter-to-220 MHz crossband duplex link to 

stay in touch. Years later the Taylors linked up by ham 

radio when Joe went on sabbatical to Australia. 

	Joe holds a B.A. in physics from Haverford and then 

a PhD from Harvard in astronomy. Hal went on to a PhD, too, 

and now teaches physics at Richard Stockton College in New 

Jersey.

	There is a learned tradition in the Taylor family. 

Joe's and Hal's father was a school teacher and principal; a 

relative also named Joe Taylor founded Bryn Mawr College. 

Still another relative was the first president of Haverford 

College.

	Joe Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered the binary 

pulsar in 1974 as part of an extensive, specially designed 

search for pulsars using the 300-meter dish at Arecibo. The 

two realized that this binary pulsar could provide an 

excellent opportunity to test Einstein's theory (a process 

that continues to the present, as new technologies continue 

to provide opportunities to verify the theory).

	Taylor and Hulse published their Arecibo work in 

1975 in the *Astrophysical Journal Letter*. Hulse actually 

discovered the binary pulsar system, but gives most of the 

credit to his mentor Taylor, who for the past 19 years has 

made the measurements and calculations resulting from the 

system necessary for proving the theory.

	In short, the rate at which the Taylor-Hulse pulsars 

are spiraling toward each other agrees with the rate 

predicted by Einstein's theory to within half a percent.

	Joe Taylor today is Princeton University's James S. 

McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physlcs with 

an endowed chair, the highest teaching title bestowed by the 

university. 

	Russell Hulse's rank of principal research physicist 

at the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory is the highest 

research title by the Laboratory. 

	Joe Taylor won the Wolf Prize, one of the most 

prestigious honors in physics, in January 1992. The Wolf 

Prize carries a $100,000 award, which he gave to the 

Princeton Physics Department for graduate fellowships. 

		Taylor also received a MacArthur "genius" 

award in 1981 and the Dannie Heineman Prize of the American 

Astronomical Society and American Insititute of Physics in 

1980. 


	*Steve Karpf is a writer of television and movie 

scripts and documentaries and lives in Montclair, New Jersey 

with his wife Patricia Karpf and 4-year-old daughter Katie. 

He's on all bands 3.5-440 MHz and especially likes HF DX.* 


FCC PLAN WOULD ALLOW 

INSTANT ON-THE-AIR 


	The FCC has proposed temporary operating authority 

to unlicensed persons who pass the examination for a new 

amateur operator license. 

	The temporary operating authority would begin when 

the exam is passed and an application for a license is 

filed, and last until a full-term license is received from 

the FCC (not more than 120 days). 

	The temporary operating authority would not be 

available to anyone whose license has been revoked or 

suspended or who has been involved in other enforcement 

proceedings before the FCC. Under the proposal, the 

Commission also would reserve the right to cancel such 

temporary operating authority without a hearing if a need to 

do so arose. 

	Those operating under the proposed new rules would 

use call signs determined by the initials of their name and 

by their mailing address. The prefix for each such call sign 

would be WZ followed by a number indicating the appropriate 

Volunteer Examiner Coordinator region. 

	The Commission said it believes this system "would 

be useful to the amateur community, yet practical to 

implement." The FCC also said it was making the proposal "to 

better serve new amateurs and to increase productivity in 

the processing of license applications." 

	The proposal, assigned PR Docket 93-267, was based 

on a petition for rule-making made in July by the Western 

Carolina Amateur Radio Society (WCARS) VEC of Knoxville, 

Tennessee (RM-8288). 

	The WCARS-VEC aired their proposal at the National 

Conference of VECs in June. 

	At presstime only the FCC news release, not the 

actual text of the NPRM, was available. 

	The ARRL board of directors said in July that the 

Commission's on-going program to implement electronic filing 

of amateur license applications was the preferred method to 

eliminate any perceived need for a temporary operating 

authority. 

	ARRL Executive Vice President David Sumner, K1ZZ, 

said that the League has always supported getting new 

amateurs on the air quickly, and has offered as much 

encouragement as it can to the FCC in the implementation of 

electronic filing, which would allow FCC staff to make the 

most of the limited time available for Amateur Radio license 

administration. 

	The League believes very strongly, Sumner said, that 

"any operating authority must stem directly from the FCC, 

not from some 'middle man' private entity, even though the 

ARRL/VEC is the largest such 'middle man.' 

	"Many of the protections we enjoy against arbitrary 

local and state regulations," Sumner said, "are the result 

of our being federally licensed. It would be a serious 

mistake to allow this federal status to be diluted in the 

interest of some short-term expedient." 

	Sumner said that the League would respond to the FCC 

proposal when the full text of the NPRM is available and 

when League members have had a chance to express their views 

on the subject to their ARRL directors. 


ARRL WASHINGTON COORDINATOR 

ANNOUNCES APRIL RETIREMENT 

	

	ARRL Washington Area Coordinator Perry Williams, 

W1UED, has announced that he will retire in April 1994 after 

40 years of service for the League. He is currently the 

staff member with the longest tenure at Headquarters. 

	Perry, just turned 65, began his ARRL career in 1954 

in the former Secretarial Department, subsequently the 

Membership Services Department, when the ARRL Headquarters 

building was located in West Hartford, Connecticut. He 

became Washington Area Coordinator in 1980.  


SHUTTLE HAMS GARNER 

NATIONAL PRESS COVERAGE 


	The hams aboard the Space Shuttle got a nice mention 

in an Associated Press story that went out Friday evening 

October 22. In a story led with the astronauts' practice 

landings using the shuttle's on-board computer, the AP noted 

that some of their very limited free time was being used to 

talk to schools via ham radio. 

	"Because of the length of the mission (the AP said) 

and the number and intensity of medical tests, NASA 

scheduled two half-days off for the seven astronauts: Friday 

and next Thursday. 

	"The astronauts squeezed in several ham radio 

contacts with U.S. schools as they orbited 178 miles high. 

	"'It's fantastic, and especially talking to young 

people,' flight engineer Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, told the AP. 

"When we do that, it makes us just really proud to be up 

here representing all the people of the United States. To be 

quite honest with you, it brings tears to my eyes." 

	As of Saturday, October 23, four days into the 13-

day mission, the hams aboard STS-58 had made nearly 300 

general QSO packet connects and several random voice 

contacts in the U.S. and abroad, according to Frank H. 

Bauer, KA3HDO, of the SAREX Working Group 

	Bauer said that in most cases, full-quieting radio 

links were established early in the pass and the school 

question and answer sessions continued until the scheduled 

loss of signal.  On October 21, the Lycee Gaston Febus 

school in Pau, France had a telebridge contact with the 

astronauts, with Jean-Marc Dumont, the France school 

coordinator, saying that over 10,000 students throughout 

France listened to the contact through a national repeater 

link, according to Bauer.  

	Because this shuttle has been particularly 

successful in hooking up with schools on schedule, times 

allotted for backup schedules have become available for 

general contact with amateurs. 


Here's the list of schools having made a contact as of Oct. 

23: 


	Russellville HS, Russellville, Arkansas; 

	Red Springs HS, Red Springs North Carolina; 

	Alamo Heights JHS, San Antonio, Texas; 

	Bloomfield School, Bloomfield, Missouri; 

	Lloyd Ferguson Elementary, League City, Texas; 

	Sycamore Middle School, Pleasant View, Tennessee; 

	Gardens Elementary, Pasadena, Texas; 

	Carl Hayden HS, Phoenix, Arizona; 

	Meyzeek Middle School, Louisville, Kentucky; 

	Webber JHS, Ft. Collins, Colorado.    

 



10 years ago in *The ARRL Letter*


	The tiny Caribbean island of Grenada topped *The 

ARRL Letter* on October 28, 1983. Mark Barettella, KA2ORK, 

then 23 years old and a student on Grenada, made news for a 

time as the only source of information out of Grenada just 

before and immediately following an invasion by U.S. troops 

in response to a military coup. The FCC initially declared a 

temporary amateur third party traffic authorization between 

the U.S. and Grenada (essentially, Barettella), suspending 

it the day after the U.S. invaded.

	KA2ORK/J3 was quoted around the world by wire 

services desperate for word from the island due to a virtual 

news blackout imposed by the Reagan administration. 

Barettella was later the subject of a *QST* article on his 

role in the drama. Barettella now lives in Kalamazoo, 

Michigan.

	The *Letter* noted that media attention to Amateur 

Radio in connection with the Grenada crisis was 

"incredible." 

	But the *Letter* also reported that the FCC had 

denied the use of Amateur Radio, even in this extraordinary 

case, for media interviews from the island, saying such 

amounted to business communications. The Commission denied, 

among several such requests, one from Walter Cronkite, then 

of CBS news (Cronkite is now KB2GSD).

	This Commission opinion continues to the present, 

most recently articulated in its new, generally more 

liberal, rules concerning business communications which went 

into effect in early September (Part 97.113), which 

prohibit:

	"any activity related to program production or news 

gathering for broadcasting purposes, except that 

communications directly related to the immediate safety of 

human life or the protection of property may be provided by 

amateur stations to broadcasters for dissemination to the 

public where no other means of communication is reasonably 

available before or at the time of the event."


BRIEFS


	* An advertisement for ICOM America in November 

*QST* concerning a Christmas promotion by ICOM could be 

interpreted to mean that ARRL memberships are being 

discounted through an ICOM coupon program. An ICOM press 

release on the promotion also mentions ARRL membership as a 

"discounted product."

	Actually, that's not the case. What the coupon 

promotes is the standard new membership "extra" already 

offered by the League: a free ARRL book to new members.


	* The Amateur Radio News Service is once again 

soliciting club newsletters for its annual competition. The 

contest, open to all Amateur Radio organizations (except 

general circulation magazines and professional journals), 

aims to recognize "superior performance in Amateur Radio 

journalism." Editors who submit one copy of any issue of 

their newsletter dated July 1992 through December 1993 will 

not only be entered in the competition but will receive a 

rating from the ARNS judges.

	Early submissions are encouraged; for more 

information on the ARNS and to enter the contest, contact 

ARNS President Lee Knirko, W9MOL, 11 S. LaSalle St., Suite 

2100, Chicago IL 60603.


	* Upcoming ARRL meetings: Long Range Planning, 

November 6; Administration and Finance, November 13; 

Volunteer Resources and Membership Services, November 13; 

and ballot counting for Board of Directors elections, 

November 19. 


	* The Radio Amateurs of Canada report "spectacular 

growth" in the amateur population north of the border. On 

October 1 there were 41,014 VE hams, 15,787 of them new 

since the introduction of a restructured Canadian amateur 

service in April 1990. The RAC also reports that nearly 72 

percent of those 41,000 amateurs have obtained "the highest 

level of qualification."

	Even more encouraging to the RAC was the drop in the 

average age of amateur licensees: in 1987 60 percent were 

over 50, while in 1993 that percentage had fallen to 54. 


	* The FCC has issued a Notice of Forfeiture for 

$10,000 to David Plourde, N1IZR, of Lewiston, Maine. 

	In April 1992 Plourde was given a Notice of Apparent 

Liability for $10,000 for allegedly operating on the 

Citizen's Band using a non-type accepted transmitter and a 

linear amplifier. Given the usual 30 days to respond to the 

NAL, Plourde had not done so as of October 12, 1993, the 

date of the Notice of Forfeiture.

	

	* Former W1AW Chief Operator Chuck Bender, W1WPR, 

who retired in 1989, is recovering from heart by-pass 

surgery and doing just fine, according to his successor, 

Jeff Bauer, WA1MBK. Countless former Novices from the 1950s 

through the 1980s have valued QSLs from W1AW signed "CR"; 

Chuck for years would stay after the night shift and give 

newcomers the thrill of a W1AW contact. 

	Incidentally, Chuck's former boss George Hart, W1NJM 

(who also began his ARRL career as a W1AW graveyard shift 

operator in the late 1930s) had by-pass work a couple of 

years ago and looks great. He's been in to the HQ building 

several times recently to use the reference library for a 

historical article he's writing.







FCC honors KN4ZT


        The FCC has presented a bronze plaque of appreciation to 

Melvin I. Woods, KN4ZT, of Annandale, Virginia. Woods was 

cited by the Commission for what it called outstanding 

assistance in solving a false distress signal case in 1992. 

	The case involved an SOS on 14.313 MHz in August 

1992.  The FCC said Woods not only provided important 

information at the time but also cooperated with the FCC in 

its subsequent investigation.

	Woods, 58, served in the U.S. Navy from 1952 to 1976 

and is a former Senior Chief Radioman and Chief Electronics 

Technician.  He was first licensed as a Novice in 1953 and 

currently holds the Amateur Extra Class license.

	At the October 13 award ceremony Woods also received 

the U.S. Coast Guard Public Service Award from Rear Admiral 

William J. Ecker.

	The case resulted in 50-year-old Jorge Mestre, ex-

NS3K, permanently surrendering his license, receiving a one-

year suspended sentence, and paying a $50,000 fine to the 

U.S. Coast Guard after pleading guilty in May, 1993 to 

knowingly and willfully communicating false distress 

signals. More information on the case is in April 1993 

*QST*, page 79.



