It’s not every day that a Case Western Reserve University student organization gets interviewed for News 5 Cleveland or Smithsonian Magazine. But for the Case Amateur Radio Club, which goes by the call sign of W8EDU, national press coverage was only a part of their lead up to the eclipse.
In their day-to-day operations, W8EDU is a place for undergraduate students to engage with amateur radio, commonly referred to as ham radio, to send and receive messages for a non-commercial purpose. Tucked in a shack on the roof of Glennan Building, W8EDU members are taking ham radio to another level, using its capabilities to make scientific discoveries.
Benjamin Nelson, a fourth-year electrical engineering major and W8EDU’s historian, said, “It was my introduction to amateur radio and a lot of electronics initially in my undergraduate. And from there, it kind of became this whole social thing, nice to hang out with people on Thursday nights, do cool radio physics and electronic stuff. And then over time, it kind of grew.”
One of his favorite memories was a time he was using a digital interface, known as FT8, to communicate with individuals outside of North America. He said, “We ping[ed] someone in South America and Europe at the same time and it was like, oh my gosh, we’re sending signals and communicating with them.”
Recently, the organization made campus headlines for their game of radio chess against The Ohio State University during the homecoming festivities at the start of the academic year, which was highlighted by the American Radio Relay League and other campus newspapers.
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