Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Intern Builds Amateur Radio Station

WALLOPS ISLAND -- Chris Billie, an engineering intern at Surface Combat Systems Center, Wallops Island, and a second year engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has completed a project to design and install a military recreation amateur radio station at the command's Morale, Welfare and Recreation Center.




The hands-on project allowed Billie to learn about multiple phases of the system engineering process, resulting in an operational high frequency/very high frequency amateur radio station.


As one of only 45 licensed military recreation stations, it will provide amateur radio recreational opportunities to amateur operators who are active duty, retired, reserve military personnel and their dependents, government service and contractor personnel at SCSC; enable Workforce Development Center students to conduct experiments and receive training in radio communications; and provide backup radio communications capability to the command during emergencies."Building an amateur radio station enabled Chris Billie to have a hands-on experience with systems engineering. His low-cost solution to engineering a platform to stimulate science, math, technology and engineering areas is now realized as future students can now pursue a Federal Communications Comm-ission Amateur Radio license. The FCC license exam covers basic regulations, operating practices and electronics theory, with a focus on VHF and UHF applications and allows the licensee to operate FM voice, digital packet (computers), television and single-sideband voice," said SCSC commanding officer, Cmdr. John Keegan.


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