Case ARC W8EDU Wins 2nd Place in ARRL FMT

By Aidan Montare, KB3UMD

Congratulations to the Case Amateur Radio Club for their second place score (out of 114 entries nation-wide) in the ARRL’s Frequency Measurement Test! The hosts of this year’s HamSCI workshop, W8EDU was able to measure the frequency of one 80 meter and one 40 meter transmission from K5CM to 0.03 and 0.02 Hertz, respectively. First place station W4VU in North Carolina won by only a slight margin of 0.01 Hz on 80 meters (a difference of one part per billion in the measurement).

The Frequency Measurement Test (FMT) is a competitive frequency estimation problem in which radio operators use their stations to identify with the highest possible accuracy the frequency of particular radio transmissions. For the April 2019 event, scheduled transmissions from K5CM in Oklahoma were used. The test also challenges participants to understand the problems of ionosphere characterization and estimating resulting Doppler shift at the time of measurement. The competition requires thorough understanding of the physics, engineering, and mathematics involved.

Additionally, HamSCI presenters Bill Engelke, AB4EJ, and John Gibbons, N8OBJ (also technical advisor for W8EDU) participated in the event.

For more results and details about the event, see http://fmt.arrl.org/