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RCA Member Paul Gilbert Becomes ARRL’s First Director of Emergency Management
In recent years, the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) has placed increased focus on strengthening its emergency communications capabilities and longstanding working relationships with federal and state agencies and private emergency response organizations. In August, ARRL announced that it hired RCA Member Paul Z. Gilbert, KE5ZW, of Cedar Park, Texas, as its first Director of Emergency Management. Mr. Gilbert was a Radio Officer, HQ Staff, for the Texas State Guard. For the past six years he has been responsible for planning and implementation of the organization's communications capabilities. Previously, he was a Public Safety Radio Coordinator for a Texas agency, charged with overseeing that organization's largescale disaster communications response and identifying and eliminating in-state interoperability issues. Mr. Gilbert brings more than 30 years of experience in public service, both in his professional and amateur radio undertakings. Since his appointment as Emergency Coordinator in 1987, he has held multiple positions in the ARRL Field Organization. He is currently in his second term as South Texas Section Manager, and he has served for more than a decade as the West Gulf Division's Assistant Director for Public Service. He acts as liaison between Division leadership and local, state, and federal emergency management organizations. He has an Amateur Extra-class license, is a member of U.S. Army MARS (the Military Auxiliary Radio System), and holds numerous Department of Homeland Security certifications, including COML, COMT, COMT Instructor, and AUXCOM Communicator. He is a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Regional Emergency Communications Coordination Working Group (RECCWG), and he is a graduate of the FEMA Emergency Management Institute's Exercise Design Course. He was a founding member of the Texas Division of Emergency Paul Gilbert. Management Communications Coordination Group.
In his new role at ARRL, Mr. Gilbert will manage a team responsible for supporting ARRL Emergency Communications programs and services, including the Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES®) and National Traffic System (NTS). He will lead the continued modernization of those programs in consonance with the future emergency communications needs of the public and ARRL’s key partners.
SOURCES
R. Palm, K1CE, ARRL Hires First Director of Emergency Management, The ARES E-Letter, ARRL, Aug. 19, 2020. ARRL Hires Paul Z. Gilbert, KE5ZW, as Director of Emergency Management, News Release from ARRL Headquarters, ARRL, Aug. 12, 2020.
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DR. JOE TAYLOR MAKES FIRST MOONBOUNCE CONTACT USING FT8
Radio Club of America member and Nobel Prize recipient (Physics, 1993) Dr. Joe Taylor, K1JT, has reported what may be the first FT8 contact via Moonbounce (Earth-Moon-Earth or EME). Codeveloper Dr. Joe Taylor, K1JT. of FT8, he reported the FT8 contact on May 21, 2020 between Paul Andrews, W2HRO, in New York, and Peter Gouweleeuw, PA2V, in the Netherlands. The contact was made possible using the currently available beta-release candidate of WSJT-X, version 2.2-rc1.
MOONBOUNCE
Earth-Moon-Earth, EME or Moonbounce is a form of radio communication propagation used by radio amateurs and others to effect global communications on frequencies above 144 MHz. Moonbounce or EME is made possible by using the Moon as a passive reflector. Despite the very large distances involved and the fact that the Moon’s surface is a poor reflector so the path losses are colossal, nevertheless it is still a form of communication that many radio amateurs and professional experimenters regularly use.
Moonbounce, EME propagation. (Courtesy Electronics Notes)
Any signals transmitted for Moonbounce communications are subject to a number of signal propagation effects, including huge-path and variable-path losses, Faraday rotation, libration fading, Doppler shift and signal polarization changes. Although single-side-band SSB has been used on some occasions by stations employing exceptionally large antennas, the majority of Moonbounce contacts used to be made using Morse code. Now with computer technology and specialized data modes, these are widely used, and because there are low signal modes, this has considerably reduced the requirements on the equipment, bringing Moonbounce within the reach of many radio amateurs.
FT8 PROTOCOL
Dr. Taylor has written several computer programs and communications protocols, including WSJT (“Weak Signal/ Joe Taylor”), a software package and protocol suite that utilizes computer-generated messages in conjunction with radio transceivers to communicate over long distances with other amateur radio operators. WSJT is useful for passing short messages via non-traditional radio communications methods, such as moon bounce and meteor scatter, and other low signal-to-noise ratio paths. It is also useful for extremely long-distance contacts using very-low power transmissions. Dr. Taylor is also the co-developer of the FT8 protocol. FT8 (“Franke-Taylor design, 8-FSK modulation”) is an extremely-weak-signal, digital, narrow bandwidth (50 Hz), QSO-only communication protocol used by amateur radio (“ham radio”) operators. It is popular among amateur radio operators for its ability to send signals despite challenging propagation conditions, high noise environments, low power operations (QRP), or even compromised antennas. Dr. Taylor explains, “Why might you want to use FT8 instead of ‘Old Reliable JT65’ for EME QSOs? FT8 is about 4 dB less sensitive than JT65, but with 15-second T/R [transmit/receive] sequences it’s four times faster, and it doesn’t use Deep Search.”
ACHIEVING MOONBOUNCE WITH FT8
The FT8 protocol included in the beta version of WSJT-X has an optional user setting to work around the 2.5-second path delay. As Dr. Taylor describes, “For terrestrial use, the FT8 decoder searches over the range -2.5 to +2.4 seconds for clock offset DT between transmitting and receiving stations. ‘DT’ represents the difference between the transmission time and actual time. When ‘Decode after EME delay’ is checked on the WSJT-X ‘Settings’ screen, the accessible DT range becomes -0.5 to +4.4 seconds. Just right for EME.” Dr. Taylor’s message board post noted, FT8 uses 8-GFSK modulation with tones separated by 6.25 Hz. At the time of the Moonbounce contact, the expected Doppler spread on the W2HRO - PA2V EME path was 8 Hz, which would
Two screenshots showing the Moonbounce Doppler spread (below) and signal reception (above) on May 21, 2020. (Courtesy, J.Taylor, Princeton University)
