CollegeARC Reaches 1 Month Mark

Well www.CollegeARC.com the College Amateur Radio Club Association is one month old! We have learned a lot about starting a community, it's been one heck of a ride to say the least. Slowly but surely the website is taking form and people are signing up. We now have roughly 47 users and a core group of people who are on almost daily. CollegeARC receives about 100 unique IP address visitors and roughly 400 page views daily. Not bad for the first month.

Recently the featured article list was updated to a MUCH better looking let alone the improvement in usability. One problem that has absolutely been a pain to try and fix is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Using the core Joomla 1.5 SEO with the Search Engine Friendly (SEF) links causes the user to not be able to login or logout (if already logged in when activated). I have the .htaccess file modified and played around with commenting the RewrightBase / line. Any suggestions would be VERY VERY VERY appreciated.




Bryce Salmi KB1LQC
www.CollegeARC.com

CollegeARC.com to Debute Sunday August 30th!

CollegeARC.com will be debuting Sunday August 30, 2009 at midnight EST. This is 0400 UTC and can be thought of at Saturday night/Sunday Morning. We hope all who are interested can visit and help make this site a success by influencing college radio clubs to become active and grow!

Quality Space Antennas Take A While To Build

So as a result of building the Turnstile Moxon Rectangle antenna for satellite operations I have learned that constructing a well-built antenna takes a LONG time. I am currently having issues tuning the phasing stub of the 70cm Moxon rectangle. I found I needed to cut the driven elements down about 1 inch due to the center PVC spacing and the end bent portions of the elements were longer than they were supposed to be. A few more hours playing around with the antenna getting the right adjustments should be enough to finish the main part of tuning. Phasing and matching stub lengths truly are crucial to this satellite antenna. The article describing the construction in detail of this antenna will be hosted on www.CollegeARC.com.

CollegeARC.com

So what is my big project this summer? Is it all these antennas I am building? No. Is it the amplifiers I will be repairing? No. Actually, its a website! I am the Vice President of K2GXT the Rochester Institute of Technology Amateur Radio Club and have been a dedicated member since my first year at RIT. In high school I also founded the Chelmsford High School Amateur Radio Club KB1NAY which was awarded the ARRL Big Project grant. So I have been in several school clubs and have had a lot of experience not only being an active and productive member but also how one is formed and maintained.

My brother and I want to give back to the amateur radio community, we have been greatly appreciative of the support and generosity of the radio amateur. Our way of giving back has been to start a club and promote the hobby since we both got our licenses, but we want to give more. We are doing this by starting www.CollegeARC.com. This website is dedicated to providing a community to share the activities of college and university amateur radio clubs to the general public and radio amateurs. It even provides a way for prospective students or alumni to find out information regarding their universities club. It also serves as a way for clubs to interact, share ideas, and work together to build stronger member involvement and relations to the public.

We recognized that there are large swings of activity with college clubs, it happens. However, we feel that if there was a way to stirr excitement, share knowledge, and provide a community for clubs to grow a foundation on we can aleviate some of the problems. www.CollegeARC.com is a big step towards this and the more involvment we can get the better.

Both my brother and I have email over 40+ clubs but only 3 have responded and more than ten emails bounced back. We are feeling the effects of outdated contact information and old websites. So we have posted on the www.qrz.com news forum under the topic "CollegeARC.com Needs Your Help"about our goals for this project and asked for help just as I am doing here.

If anyone who reads this blog or stumbles upon it knows about amateur radio clubs at universities and colleges please comment or send and email! The website is not open to the public at this time, however it is planned to be launched in August just before the academic year. Thank you for reading this blog and post! I hope to hear from you!

Bryce
KB1LQC