Scouts can now earn Morse Code interpreter strip

May 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

BSA Morse Code Interpreter StripAccording to K2BSA:

The Boy Scouts of America introduced a Morse Code Interpreter Strip for wear on youth and adult uniforms to designate those who are proficient in Morse Code. It denotes their availability for emergency communications and other types of supporting communication for Scouting and the community.

The patch design (shown above) spells out the word M-O-R-S-E in Morse Code.

According to Scouting Magazine:

The Morse Code interpreter strip designates those who are proficient in Morse Code and denotes their availability for emergency communications and other types of  supporting communication for Scouting and the community. Youth and adults may wear this strip if they show their knowledge of Morse Code  by:

  1. Carrying on a five-minute conversation in Morse Code at a speed of at least 5  words per minute.
  2. Copying correctly a two-minute message sent in Morse Code at a minimum of 5 words per minute. Copying means writing the message down as it is received.
  3. Sending a 25 word written document in Morse Code at a minimum of 5 words per minute.

These requirements closely match those of other interpreter strips.

Filed Under: CW, Kids Tagged With:

Ham Radio in the News – 4/18/12

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here’s the next installment of Ham Radio in the News….

Ham radio grows at Two Rivers. Sixth- through eighth-graders at Two Rivers School learned the intricacies of ham radio during a two-day, hands-on activity that turned part of the school into an amateur radio studio. It’s always nice to see a story about kids learning about ham radio.

Area amateur radio groups have common bond. This is a fairly typical story about how amateur radio operators provide emergency communications, but the reporting is decent, and it has contact info for both the clubs covered in the article and the ARRL.

‘Ham’ takes over city park. Wires were strung from tree to tree and from pole to pole at Brewton City Park Saturday when the Brewton Amateur Radio Union (WB4ARU) set up for broadcasting (sic) and demonstrations. The reporter didn’t get the difference between broadcasting and transmitting, but that’s OK. It’s still a good story.

Filed Under: Ham Radio in the News, Kids

WA2HOM now on YouTube!

March 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here’s a video that was recently made by the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum about WA2HOM and the exhibits we sponsored.

Filed Under: Kids

Ham radio and Boy’s Life

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Click on the image to see all the detail.

The magazine cover at right is from the January 1959 issue of Boy’s Life, a magazine send to all Boy Scouts. Dave, W9OCM, shared this with members of the Glowbugs mailing list, a mailing for hams who enjoy working with vacuum tube circuits.

Of course, this unleashed a flood of memories and comments. Dave himself comments:

In February 1959, I was 13 and just beginning to figure out radio.  In some ways, I’m still trying to figure out radio….just not 13.  I wouldn’t be licensed until 2 years later 04/61 as KNØHSD.

Tom, N0JMY says,

If you go to http://tinyurl.com/7oqrezk you can read the article  by W1UED (click on the appropriate line in the contents).  Also, there’s a National ad on the contents page. [[All the ads are interesting to read.....Dan]]  I was alive then, but it wasn’t until the late winter of ’67-68 that I picked up a Boy’s Life mag out of boredom and stumbled onto an article called “Hamming it Up”.  And the rest is, as they say, “hay-seedery.”

Jon, K1NV, comments,

I’m getting a little teary, seeing a copy of “Boys Life” for the first time in about 50+ years. There was a ton of practical info to satisfy any American boy’s interests.  I was torn between stamp collecting, astronomy, model airplanes, and, yes, radio.   My stack of “Boys Life” magazines fed these interests.

We couldn’t afford the shortwave set kit  but the official Boy Scout crystal set got things going for me until I graduated to the Philco console with two shortwave bands in the mid-fifties. After learning code with flags and flashlights as a Boy Scout, the novice ticket arrived early in 1959.

Bill, KU8H, says,

My experience with Boy’s Life is from the late 50s and early 60s. They did help set the hook for my interest in electronics in general – ham radio in particular. The oatmeal box with home made capacitor and a crystal detector was from Boy’s Life. I don’t remember which issue(s). That was more than two weeks ago! <evil grin>.

They also fed my interest in the outdoor life in the woods. When people want a campfire or a fireplace lit to this day…I’m their go-to man. One paper match no matter the wind. No gasoline, kerosene, nor other artificial accelerants.

People are sometimes critical of Boy Scouts, and I often joke about my very short career as a Scout, but you have to hand it to them in many respects. They exposed boys to a wide range of activities, many of which stick with them for a lifetime.

Filed Under: Elmering, Kids Tagged With: ,

Vote for the next Radio Scouting Emblem

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Radio Scouting EmblemAre you involved with Scouting and ham radio?  Then, vote for the next Radio Scouting Emblem. The one at right is my favorite.

Filed Under: Kids

JOTA gets scouts on the air

October 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

At the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum Saturday, we participated in the 54th Jamboree on the Air (JOTA). As the website says, “The Jamboree-on-the-Air, or JOTA, is an annual Scouting event that uses amateur radio to link Scouts around the world, around the nation, and in your own community.”

We didn’t have a big turnout, but we had a lot of fun. The hams that turned out included Pat, W8LNO; Quentin, KD8IPF; and Mark, W8MP. Pat and Quentin are both involved in the Scout leadersip; Mark’s 14-year-old son, Brian, KD8EEH, is an Eagle Scout. In addition to Brian, we had four Cub Scouts, whose names I didn’t write down (sorry!), and via 2m FM, Stuart, KD8LWR.

They all were able to talk to other Scouts, all on 20m phone.

The highlight of our operation was our QSO with XE1L in Mexico City. XE1L is the station of Luis, a friend of W8MP. This was not a scheduled contact at all. We just happened to run across them.

Brian, KD8EEH, made the contact, and spoke in Spanish with the two Mexican Scouts, Stephanie and Alex, for more than 45 minutes. I was certainly impressed with Brian’s Spanish skills. I don’t think that I could have kept up the conversation so long.

In addition to the HF station, I set up our 2m radio and connected to several EchoLink nodes at which hams were participating in the JOTA. One of them was in California, the other in Ontario. Stuart talked to several of the Scouts in Canada.

Next year, we might think about being a bit more organized. That might make the experience a little more educational for the Scouts, but just getting them on the air was a lot of fun.

JOTA 2011

Filed Under: Hands-On Museum, Kids

Ham radio in the news – Jamboree on the Air 2011 edition

October 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here are three news items on this weekend’s Jamboree on the Air. More on JOTA at the Hands-On Museum later.

Local Boy Scouts Take To The Airwaves To Communicate With Other Scout Groups. This is a story about the operation at K3BSA. We worked them yesterday.

Scouts Dial into Past with Ham Radios. Ugggh. Yet another article calling ham radio antiquated. Maybe some members of the Magic Valley Amateur Radio Club can reply to this article and set readers straight.

Boy Scouts communicating through two-way radio. Here’s a TV spot on the same JOTA operation in Magic Valley. This report is much better than the newspaper article. The accompanying video shows the Scouts were very interested in the operation.

Filed Under: Ham Radio in the News, Kids

A ham radio Halloween story

October 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

On About.Com, Mary L. writes about her experience with “haunted ham radio.” She writes,

The next day, sometime in the early evening, I plugged the radio into the wall and began tinkering with it. Then, the most terrifying thing happened. The static faded completely. The silence came back on as did the sound of breathing. Suddenly, the creepy voice of a man came on and said, “Hello, little girl.”

Yipes! :)

Filed Under: Kids, Receivers

In My Inbox – 9/13/11

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I had a couple of interesting items in my inbox this morning:

  1. Free PRO membership to Instructables.Com. Normally, PRO memberships cost money, but Instructables offers free PRO memberships to teachers. When I asked if I qualify because I teach ham radio classes, they said I sure do, and I’m now a PRO member. Very cool. Thanks, Instructables!
  2. A request from Nestoras, 5B4AHZ, secretary of the Cyprus Amateur Radio Society to reproduce my Parent’s Guide to Ham Radio. He writes, “Over the last 3 years or so, be it by pure chance, 3-4 very active hams got together and are trying to re-energise interest in amateur radio within Cypriot society. Given our small number, we rely heavily on help provided by other clubs and societies, who provide us with lots of material that is modified and translated in Greek, for the local population here.  I would like to ask for your permission to recreate the parent’s guide to amateur radio you have created, on behalf of our society.”
       How cool is that? Of course, I gave him permission to do so. I would also be happy to send it to any other ham radio society that would like to have it translated into their language.
Filed Under: Building/Homebrew, Kids

Ham Radio at the Detroit Maker Faire

August 2, 2011 By 2 Comments

This Saturday, I was part of the ham radio booth at the 2011 Detroit Maker Faire. What a blast. As I’ve preached before, Makers are our kind of people. That is to say they are people interested in actually doing stuff. And that includes both the exhibitors and the attendees.

KB6NU @ 2011 Detroit Maker Faire

Yours truly at the 2011 Detroit Maker Faire. Seated is Dave, N8SBE, enjoying lunch. Photo courtesy of Roger Rayle.

To be honest, I didn’t get to see much of the Faire myself. If you take a look at the website, though, and some of the pictures taken by Roger Rayle, you’ll get an idea of what was being exhibited, and how much fun it was.

As far as ham radio goes, we had quite an operation, thanks in no small part to  James, W8ISS, who was our organizer. It included two HF stations, my Morse Code display, and a satellite station. The real coup here was that James got museum personnel to erect two antennas for us up on the museum roof. One was an R8 vertical; \;the other a multi-band dipole.

We were so lucky with radio conditions. Conditions on both 40m and 20m were really good on Saturday afternoon, and we generated pileups on both CW and phone. It was a real blast to be on the other side of a pileup and get to work stations one right after the other.

As I mentioned, my contribution was a Morse Code setup. I had my touch keyer, a bug, my J-37 straight key with leg clamp, and my Kent paddle all on display. As I usually do, I tried to induce people to step up and send their names in Morse Code. With this crowd, it wasn’t too difficult to do.

What I would do is ask them the initial of their first name, and then show them how to send that using the touch keyer. Then, I’d encourage them to look up the other letters of their name on the chart I had on the table. If they were able to successfully do this in a more or less understandable fashion, I would extend my hand and say, “Nice to meet you, Lindsay (or Julius or Aidan or whatever their name happened to be).” That would usually get a surprised smile out of them.

Perhaps even more important than teaching people something about Morse Code or ham radio, the “send your name in Morse Code” display gave me a chance to make contact with people. I passed out a lot of cards at this event, and invited many to attend our next one-day Tech class.

One interesting contact I made was with a woman who was home-schooling her two children. While the boy and girl played with the keys, I had a discussion with her about why I thought ham radio was a good fit with home schooling. I noted that it not only taught kids something about science and technology, but also about geography and social skills.

She agreed and noted that she thought that many other home schoolers would be interested in getting their kids into ham radio. She gave me her e-mail address and said that she would be willing to plug me into the home schooling movement. Stay tuned for how that goes.

In nearly every way, the Detroit Maker Faire was a great event. We made lots of contacts, both on-the-air and in person, we taught a lot of people about ham radio, and had a lot of fun in the process. The only thing that could have been better was that it could have been about ten degrees cooler, but that’s something we could deal with.

Filed Under: Kids, Promotion & PR, Special Events
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