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 Welcome to NIHRAC   

The National Institutes of Health Radio Amateur Club
 [HQ @ Bethesda, Maryland, USA]

 -- 57 years of ham radio and public service! --

Membership is open to anyone with an interest in amateur radio as a hobby or community service activity, or in related DIY electronics projects.

COVID-19 ANNOUNCEMENT

Due the COVID-19 emergency, physical access to the NIHRAC's facility may have certain limitations. Before a meeting, we will use our email list to announce whether in-person meeting on the NIH campus is possible. Our Echolink server and 2m K3YGG repeater continue to be openly available, but these resources can be temporarily sequestered if we are called to provide emergency communications support to NIH or our community. For any inquiries, contact us at info@nihrac.org or via our regular nihrac-l@list.nih.gov email list (registration is required to post to this list).

  
Assembling a rotator connector
Hexbeam antenna repairs - July 2019








(pictures from October 2019 club activities)

CLUB MEETINGS

The Club meets the first Saturday of every month at 1:30pm. During the COVID-19 emergency, meetings are often held online (video is not required but encouraged). The link to join a meeting is communicated via our email forum (see our Membership page for details) before a scheduled meeting. When allowed by the County and NIH COVID-19 emergency status, we meet at Building 11, Room 305 in the NIH Bethesda campus - see About Us for directions. We welcome anyone to join our meetings-- club membership or a ham license are not required. 

We also hold a weekly on-the-air "net" every Monday at 9:00 p.m. on our 2 meter repeater.  We welcome check-ins from all stations over RF or through the Internet via EchoLink (our server is K3YGG-R). Contact us at info@nihrac.org if you need assistance attending.


 





MEMBERSHIP

Anyone interested in, or curious about, amateur radio, telecommunications, emergency communications services, or related technical or public service activities can join us. Participation in our emergency communications activities, a FCC Amateur Radio license or holding a NIH badge ID are NOT required for membership. Membership is free. For more details, visit our Membership page.


CLUB RESOURCES
 
NIHRAC Radio Stations (October 2019)
NIHRAC makes a number of resources freely available to its members. Our facility has radio stations and antenna systems for a variety of analog and digital radio communications modalities, office space for meetings and other hobby activities, as well as tools and equipment for radio experimentation and other DIY projects. Visit our Club Resources page for more details.
 

  REPEATERS
 
 We maintain a repeater in the 2-meter band that is openly available to anyone with a radio amateur license. We also make regular use of a local 70-cm repeater. Our 2-meter repeater frequencies are 144.69 MHz input / 145.29 MHz output. No PL tone is currently required for access. For more details, please visit our Repeaters page.  


 
W3NIH
K3YGG
KB3SKV
 
 AAN3NIH
AAN3NI
AAN3NA
 
KID470
 
 
 
 Solar X-rays:
Status

Geomagnetic Field:
Status

(Full report at n3kl.org)
 

News and Announcements

  • Click on an item to see details.
  • Hybrid-Modality Club Meetings The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote meetings as regular as a plain cup of joe. We are experimenting with a new modality for our monthly meetings: simultaneous in-person ...
    Posted Sep 6, 2022, 7:50 AM by Victor Cid
  • Antenna Repair Update Our telescopic antenna tower was repaired. The muti-band Hexx/Spider Beam antenna is also repaired and now raised over 40 feet above the roof of our building in the ...
    Posted Oct 15, 2019, 11:49 AM by Victor Cid
  • Our renovated facility The bulk of the NIH-sponsored renovation of our club facility is completed. We have new radio operating stations that support all amateur radio bands and modes of operation. The ...
    Posted Oct 15, 2019, 11:26 AM by Victor Cid
  • FIELD DAY 2017 VIDEO As in several years past, many of our NIHRAC members joined the Randallstown Amateur Radio Club during the ARRL Field Day in June at the Washington Monument State Park in ...
    Posted Dec 13, 2017, 4:42 PM by Victor Cid
  • BMERS PROJECT ARTICLE PUBLISHED An article about our collaborative project with NLM was published in the Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness journal. The piece describes the current status of BMERS, our emergency email ...
    Posted Dec 1, 2017, 2:51 PM by Victor Cid
Showing posts 1 - 5 of 40. View more »
 
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