WA3NAN

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WELCOME

Goddard Amatuer Radio Club (WA3NAN) was created by employees of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt Maryland. The club provides a social circle for Amateur Radio operators associated with NASA and spaceflight interests. The club's primary functions are to provide a place for radio operation, experimentation, training / education, and emergency comm support.

What is Amateur Radio

Amateur radio (sometimes called HAM Radio) is a non-commercial medium for hobbies and experimenters to learn about wireless communications in all kinds of forms. These can include HF long distance communications as well as high speed digital microwave communications to satellite communications.

Amateur radio operators come from all walks of life. movie stars, missionaries, doctors, students, politicians, truck drivers and just plain folks. They are all ages, sexes, income levels and nationalities. They say Hello to the world in many languages and many ways. But whether they prefer Morse code on an old brass telegraph key, voice communication on a hand-held radio, or computerized messages transmitted via satellite, they all have an interest in what's happening in the world, and they use radio to reach out.

Club Activities

The club has provided public services to the greater public. Some of these services include support of Amateur Radio contacts between the ISS and local schools, retransmissions of the intresting launch events for public consumption, and licensing classes for new operators.

We also participate in many Amateur radio competitive events and emergency communications drills.

Club members hold a weekly club service net every Thursday at 21:00 (9) local and a social keep-in-touch net for the local ham community every day at noon local on the 146.835 MHz repeater, this net is open to the Amateur radio community.

Club Facilities

The club has facilities for club members to use, these include: HF operating stations; HAM Satellite tracking station (VHF/UHF); VHF Repeater; a radio test/development lab.

The club's 2M repeater, located is on the water tower at NASA GSFC (near 495 & 295), is open for use by the general amateur radio community. Has coverage over the DC/Metro Region, Northern VA, and up towards Baltimore, MD. Repeater output is at 146.835 MHz, no PL required. This repeater is accessible from Echolink using node number 40045.