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Dr. Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., K1JT
Cover of the
January 2023 QST, American Radio Relay League (ARRL)
The January 2023 issue of QST magazine recently arrived in my mailbox.
As is my custom, the same evening I went through it from cover to cover. That's
not to say I read everything within, but I do look for content of interest on every
page. Monthly features like "Correspondence" (from readers), "Up Front" (photos
of Ham-related items - often vintage), "100, 50, and 25 Years Ago" (covers and sample
stories from past editions), "Hints & Hacks" (hints and hacks), "Ask
Dave" ([Casler,
KE0OG], formerly "The Doctor Is In," by
Joel Hallas) nearly always get read in full.
"Member Highlight" is usually an interesting read since it gives insight into the
backgrounds of usually life-long Hams. Lifelong in some cases means twenty years
because the member is maybe twenty-six years old. Other times it means seventy years
as a licensed Ham, where the highlighted operator got into radio as a kid during
the World War II era.
The January 2023 issue of QST highlights
Dr. Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., K1JT. An accomplished radio astronomer,
Dr. Taylor's feature is the first of what will be a year-long theme to "highlight
amateurs who have achieved recognition in areas outside of, or related to, amateur
radio." I think that is a great idea and look forward to seeing who they come
up with. Too bad that the ARRL doesn't post stories like this so that non-members
can have access to them; they would serve as a great motivation to people considering
earning a new license or upgrading to a higher class.
Having worked with many people during my decades-long career in the
RF and microwave engineering
realm, consistently some of the most capable engineers, technicians, and managers
have been Hams. My license* was not earned until after I left the corporate world
and became independent to work full-time at publishing RF Cafe and writing software.
That's not to say non-Hams are not brilliant, but typically enthusiasm noticeably
exudes from very active amateur radio operators. I wish I had been counted amongst
their numbers back in the day.
The page photo above is intentionally not of high enough resolution to be legible
so as to not violate any copyright, but the
Fair Use Act should cover this short
excerpt:
"JT. Since 2001, those two letters have signaled digital transformation in ham
radio. They are the initials of the pioneering scientist and amateur radio innovator,
Joe Taylor, whose software suite, WSJT - updated to WSJT-X - revolutionized ham
radio. Today, the warble of JT8 dominates, but the tones of FT4, JT9, SWPR, and
Q65 all emerge from the static to connect hams the world over with signal-to-noise
ratios as low as -44 dB. "
"Dr. Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., K1JT, began the development of his weak-signal
software in 2000, at a time when he wasn't lecturing and training PhD students..."
"His 1993 Nobel Prize-winning research on pulsars - in which he and Russell Hulse
observed evidence of gravitational radiation using a binary system of stars, providing
experimental proof of Einstein's general theory of relativity - involved parsing
signals from noise."
Unfortunately, you need to be an ARRL member to read "the rest of the
story..."
*
Technician Class in 2010, General
Class in 2015,
Amateur Extra
class in 2017.
Posted December 23, 2022
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