Matt Rainey, N2EEE, PMRC Scholarship Recipient
Good afternoon,
I’m Matthew Rainey, your scholarship recipient. I really appreciate that you have this scholarship
program available, it truly does help make college more affordable.
I started with Amateur Radio in December of 2014. Originally, Morse code got me interested. I
thought that communicating through a single, on-off keyed tone or light was revolutionary. This was
early in my electronics career/hobby, where I also just started tinkering with Arduino.
In early January I convinced my dad to drive me out to take the test. I was fortunate enough to not just
pass the technician test, but the general test, too. He has never been licensed, and unfortunately he didn’t
seem to have much of an interest. A few weeks later, I got the callsign KD2HVJ. My elmer, Jim
N2GXJ, told me everything I needed to know about amateur radio at that time and invited me to join the
Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club (GCARC). So I did and surprised him by getting my extra class
license a month later, as well as a vanity callsign, N2EEE. I had such a passion for the material that it
solidified the choice of my studies: Electrical/Computer engineering.
I started at Rowan University in the fall of 2016. I’m currently a rising senior, attending there
for Electrical/Computer engineering with a GPA of 3.7. Amateur radio has helped me through my
classes significantly.
Most recently, amateur radio has enabled me to work on our future cubesat mission. It is not titled yet, but there was a massive
hiccup on out last satellite transceiver (Memsat), where the radio didn’t arrive until 2 weeks before it
had to go to Houston. No development could be successfully completed in time, and we were forced
to use the beacon for simplex. This time, we will be using a CC1200 with an AtMega328p
programmed in C, which should be capable of data rates over 1.2 Mbps. This is plenty for a basic cubesat. This
radio will be transmitting primarily on 70cm with receive on 2m. Since this is a “sub GHz”
transceiver, we will not be able to use the L band (23cm), which would be optimal for any high datarate communications, such as image transmission
Other than amateur radio, I enjoy playing video games with my brother, going kayaking/fishing
with my dad, and riding bikes with my friends.
Currently, I work as a Junior Engineer for Information Assurance Specialists, designing and building networking equipment for customers, some
of which legally I’m not allowed to know about. Other than that, I enjoy designing projects with
microcontrollers, and dabbling in linux as a hobby. I use it extensively at work, where I have even
helped them develop their own linux distribution for routers. When a hobby becomes a career, it makes
work so much easier.
Again, thank you so much for having this scholarship available. It absolutely helps pay for
college. Even working full time in a machine shop during the summer, and 20 hours/week during school, this
scholarship is the sole reason I was able to pay for last year. Words cannot express how thankful I am.
73,
Matt (N2EEE)