One of the problems of staying in Fairborn, is that it’s not really convenient to Hara Arena. You have to drive about ten miles through town, and on Friday morning, much of that stretch has quite a bit of traffic. I left the the hotel at 7:35, expecting to easily get to the arena by 8:00, but after a couple of wrong turns and having to deal with the traffic, I didn’t get there until 8:15. And because I still needed to purchase my ticket, I didn’t hit the Flea Market until 8:30.
That was OK with me, though; I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. What I did find right off was a little package of plastic alignment tools–10 for $1. These are just what I need to get my KX-1 adjusted on 20m.
At 9:00 am, I headed over to the first forum of the day–Clubs and Mentoring, led by Norm W3IZ. Norm didn’t really have a program, so we all just sat around and talked. The one good thing about this forum is that I got to meet Dan N9LVS, the Affiliated Club Coordinator for Wisconsin. I was kind of embarassed later because I didn’t recognize him right off, even though we’d swapped e-mails. I know it’s irrational, but he didn’t look how I expected him to look.
After the forum, I spent the next couple of hours wandering the flea market. There seemed to be fewer sellers this year. Someone said that this was because bad weather was forecast earlier in the week, but aside from some heavy rains on Thursday, and some showers very early Friday, the weather was very pleasant.
One thing I did pick up right away was the tripod adapter for the fiberglass masts I purchased a couple of years ago. Although it’s kind of expensive ($40), it does make the masts more versatile. I wanted to get mine right away so that they wouldn’t run out of them.
About 11:30, I wandered inside for lunch and ran into Dan N9LVS again and convinced him to go to have some lunch with me. We had the famous Dayton pizza. As we were sitting there, a guy joined us who said that he had gone to the session on lightning protection earlier, and when the speaker failed to show up, he got up and did the talk. That was kind of amusing.
After lunch, I attended the Teacher’s Workshop. The first presenter was Bruce KQ6TQ (how’s that for a call?). He talked about the Boulder (CO) ARC Juniors program. Although it’s been in existence for a while, this was the first that I’d heard of it.
This is a wonderful program. While the numbers fluctuate, they have about 40 kids in the program and a little more than half that number of adults/mentors. The kids range in age from 9 to 18, and they are an incredibly active group, holding regular meetings once a week and special events, such as Field Day. There’s an article on the BARC Juniors program from the September 1997 QST available on the ARRL website.
After the program, I got to speak a little with KQ6TQ, as well as Rip NV0M and Ellie N0QCX. Rip and Ellie are two of the big wheels behind the program–the Juniors meet in their basement! These three were very gracious in sharing their time with me.
From what they told me, it looks like there are three key things which make the program so successful:
- A low kid/mentor ratio. Typically, a mentor works with only one or two kids. This allows the mentor to give the kids all of the attention they need to succeed.
- Properly matching mentors to kids. Bruce, for example, admitted that he didn’t feel comfortable working with the really young kids, but Nellie said that he was really great with the older ones. Nellie is the one responsible for pairing kids with mentors, and she must have a real talent for it for the program to continue to be so successful.
- Keeping the kids active. This is really a key for any club, but I think it may be more important with kids as it helps keep them focused. As I mentioned, they meet every week and work on projects, be it operating or an antenna project or whatever. Activities keep the juices flowing.
How does this relate to my situation? Well, for one thing, there are only two mentors for 12 or 13 kids. Not good. I’m going to have to find more mentors to work with me. I’m thinking of not only appealing to the guys in our club, but to hams in our area who are not members of our club. Maybe this kind of activity will appeal to them even if other ARROW activities do not.
Another thing is that summer vacation is coming up real soon now, and there are currently no plans to continue throughout the summer. The middle school teachers say this is no problem, and that the kids will come back in the fall. I’m not so sure about this. I’ve emailed them asking if somehow we could do something over the summer, even if it’s with a smaller group. Now that I’ve tasted a little bit of success, I want more. :)
Mark Spencer WA8SME, the ARRL’s Educational Project Coordinator also gave a demonstration of some of the demonstration boards he’s developed for use in the classroom. One of them that looked really interesting to me is a board that can be used to demonstrate the concept of the mixer. There are supposed to be descriptions of these boards somewhere on the ARRL website, but I wasn’t very successful in finding them. I have e-mails WA8SME, and I’ll link to them here when I do find out.
I spent the rest of the day perusing the flea market, again not buying much of anything. One thing I did pick up was another Bencher BY-1 for $40. It’s not in the best of shape, but it’s serviceable–I’ve been using it for the last week. As with the last one I bought, the plan is to re-sell it to a budding CW operator.
That evening, QRP ARCI held their Vendor Night and Construction competition. There were quite a few interesting things. I almost bought a K8RA paddle, for example, but he didn’t have any to sell, just a demo unit. That’s a shame, too, as I’m sure he could have sold a dozen or more that evening.
The construction projects were nothing short of fabulous. One that caught my eye was a rotary bug. I don’t remember all the construction details, but basically activating the lever caused a fly wheel to rotate. Spring tension allowed it to rotate only so far and then back to make contact with the dit or dah terminal.
I was hoping that there would be pictures of the construction projects the QRP ARCI website, but no luck. Again, if I do find links to some pictures, I’ll post them here.
I dragged myself to my room about 11 pm that night, very tired from a full day of ham radio.
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