Yesterday, my brother-in-law and his family came over for a visit. They don’t visit that often as they have lived in Tokyo for the last three years, so they’ve never seen my ham equipment before. When they arrived, I happened to be in the shack, so before we all went upstairs, they got a quickie demo of ham radio.
The demo must have struck a chord because after dinner, my ten-year-old nephew Nicholas asked if he could go downstairs and look at the radios. I said sure and went down into the basement with him. Since it was nearly time for our club net on 2m, I fired up the 2m rig, and asked if anyone was on frequency a bit early. Mike, WA3THT, came right back to me.
After exchanging a few words with Mike, I gave the microphone to Nicholas. Nicholas is not shy when it comes to talking, so unlike most kids, he was not hesitant at all about talking on the radio. He peppered Mike with a bunch of questions about amateur radio before the net actually got under way. Mike was great, patiently answering all of Nicholas’s questions.
After the net started, I showed Nicholas some of the other stuff I had in the shack. We listened to some CW contacts as well as some SSB contacts. After listening to some CW, I demonstrated how my keyer works and let him play around a little with it.
After that, I showed him some of my QSL cards and discussed how call signs are assigned. I also showed him on my world map where some of the stations whose QSLs I had were located.
Overall, I think he was quite interested in the whole deal. He asked me how he could listen to amateurs on his shortwave radio at home, so I wrote down the frequencies for the 40, 20, and 15 meter bands on my QSL card and gave that to him. I also gave him and his father a few tips on how to get better shortwave reception once they get home.
Who knows? We may have another ham in the family before long.
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