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About Us

Founded in March 7, 1963, the NIH Radio Amateur Club has provided nearly a half century of voluntary public service, safety, and emergency-preparedness communications to the National Institutes of Health, and to the local, regional, and international communities. 
 
NIHRAC is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health, the primary U.S. Federal Government organization responsible for medical and behavioral research.  NIH supports our club with facilities and equipment to promote the technical and professional development of our membership, enabling us to provide a higher level of service to our community and nation.

We are an integral part of the NIH Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) and maintain a close working relationship with The NIH Clinical Center, the hospital on the Bethesda, MD campus. Our club participates in the biannual emergency preparedness exercise by providing communications at the hospital and other emergency preparedness events (for example, see this NIH Record article).

We also collaborate with the National Library of Medicine on the Bethesda Hospital Emergency Preparedness Partnership (BHEPP), providing radio operation and engineering expertise for an emergency communications research project that makes use of Winlink 2000.

NIHRAC has a long standing affiliation with the Montgomery County, Maryland RACES/ARES, and the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA).  The Club is also AMSAT Life Member Society #20 (since about 1970), and Club Sponsor of The Mid-Atlantic Repeater Council (T-MARC). We are also responsible for NIH's affiliation with Army-MARS.

Membership in our Radio Amateur Club is open to anyone interested in the hobby. We conduct monthly in-person meetings in the Bethesda Campus of the National Institutes of Health (Maryland, USA). See below for directions. We also hold on-the-air meetings, or radio nets, every Monday night at 8:30PM EST on our 2 meter repeater (see home page) and and on the Internet via Echolink (K3YGG-R).

 

DIRECTIONS TO THE CLUB

Compass
Official meetings are generally held at 1:00 pm on the first Saturday of each month at the NIHRAC Emergency Communications Center on the Bethesda campus of the NIH, Building 11, Room 308 (see Contact Us for a Google map).
 
To attend our regular meetings on Saturdays:
  • Visitors driving or walking must enter the NIH Campus in Bethesda via the NIH Commercial Vehicle Inspection Facility (CVIF) on Rockville Pike, south of Cedar Lane (see the NIH visitor map, right side near the top).
  • There are a few parking lots for visitors in the campus, but on weekends visitors are also allowed to park on regular parking spaces designated for NIH Parking Permit Holders. Do not park on spaces that have other special reserved designations. There are a few parking spaces in front (West side) of building 11.
For more details about accessing the NIH campus in Bethesda, visit the NIH Visitor Information page. Once you  arrive to Building 11, call the NIHRAC ECC to 301-496-5311 and someone will come to escort you to the meeting room. If you have a mobile or HT amateur radio, you can also call someone via our 2M repeater at 145.290 MHz.