Dave W5OC

Belton Oct 4, 2025 A beautiful day for Texas’ best hamfests at Belton this Saturday.  We had a good spotting of JSCARC members: Tom N3LLL, George AD5CQ, Jerry N5FWB, Tyler KJ5MCS, Keith KG5HOK, and Dave W5OC.  Perhaps some more that I didn’t see? In general, the equipment for sale were mostly a good variety of … Read more…

4 Student Interns from the JSC Student Ham Radio Committee attended a JSCARC sponsored Soldering 101 class held in the W5RRR shack. This is the first time we’ve conducted this class in the shack vs the adjacent Scuba room.  Why move?  We typically have many obstacles to temporarily clear out in the Scuba room and … Read more…

Both the new JSC Fall Semester Student Ham Radio committee and the University of Houston ARC Students attended a JSCARC visit on Sept 24. Jeff AB4ME, Chris W5HOO, and Dave W5OC were the JSCARC hosts for the meeting which involved a presentation in the Gilruth MARS room and then a walk to the W5RRR shack … Read more…

The JSCARC club is fortunate to have a ham radio balloonist of great acclaim- John Maca AB5SS.  John has been experimenting, developing, participating and deploying ham radio trackers and sensors on balloons for over 30+ years. As previously posted, he spearheaded our first JSC student intern balloon project for Summer 2025 interns.  One of the … Read more…

Girls In Aviation This is the JSCARC’s second time participation in the annual Girls In Aviation event held on September 20 at the Lone Star Museum.  JSCARC members K5KGH, KG5URA, and AD5CQ hosted a table at the sold out event.  See the blog report and photos here KI5CWE The summer semester JSC student intern balloon, … Read more…

The Rover in a VHF contest is an ultimate challenge for those hams who enjoy developing and testing equipment out in the field.  There’s tremendous satisfaction operating a complex radio system that began as a paper design, deployed with hardware and software, and is tested in the field.  Kinda like designing, deploying, and flying a … Read more…

I’m posting here again to encourage and inspire hams to activate the SOTA (Summits On The Air).  I hope others will join this aspect of ham radio especially if you enjoy the outdoors and need an excuse to go on a mini-adventure. SOTA is not an especially common activity here in Houston.  Why?  Because there … Read more…

From gentle push… to potential game changer Compliments to Paul KJ5JIO and John AB5SS.  Paul instigated the gentle momentum to re-think about our student intern ham radio program, and John generously grabbed the leadership role to kickstart a brand-new balloon program for our student interns. <John behind inflated balloon> Background The club has been supporting … Read more…