More new hams!

In the past two weeks, I’ve taught two one-day Tech classes. The first was at the University of Michigan on Saturday, October 5, 2024. We chose that date because it was the first Saturday this fall when there wasn’t a U-M home football game.

Football games are a big deal around here as you might expect. The university has the largest American football stadium in the world, and won the national championship last year (but this year they aren’t doing quite so well).

My classes are always a mix of university students and the general public. for this class, there were 15 students and 5 folks that signed up via my website. When all was said and done, 16 passed the test (with one passing the General test as well). Of the four that failed, at least two did not prepare at all before the class. James, AE8JF, who headed up the VE team, said, “A couple people that I talked to that failed said that they hadn’t prepared.” *sighs*

Jawning in Philadelphia

This past weekend, I taught a one-day Tech class at JawnCon at Arcadia University in the suburbs of Philadelphia. This is only the second year for JawnCon, and they only sold 250 tickets, so I wasn’t expecting a big class. That being the case, I was pleasantly surprised to find 10 or so in the classroom when it was time to get started.

Like all the classes I’ve taught at cons, people wander in and out. I’m OK with that, although it does hurt one’s chances of passing the test. Seven folks stuck with me the whole way, and all seven passed the test.

One of the problems with these con classes is getting information to prospective students. While some students are able to pass the test if they come in cold, they really increase their chances of passing the test if they read through the study guide before the class. Often, some of the people that show up for the class haven’t downloaded the study guide (it’s free!).

Case in point: A young guy showed up just before lunch and sat down close to the front. I chatted with him a bit and asked if he’d gotten the study guide. When a perplexed look crossed his face, I gave him the URL. He downloaded it right away. Despite sitting through the rest of the class, he failed by two questions.  I gotta think that if he’d been in the class from the start, or had gotten the study guide before the class, he would have passed.

Of course, I couldn’t have done either of these classes without a VE team. Thanks to all the ARROW VEs that showed up on October 5 and to Nicole, AD2IM and Ed, N2XDD for organizing the team for JawnCon.

A nice mention by ARDC

In their last grantee roundup, ARDC gave us a nice shoutout. They wrote:

Ham Radio Village (K0HRV): Amateur Radio Evangelist
The Ham Radio Village (K0HRV) distributes quality educational content, offers hand-on amateur radio experiences, and hosts license testing sessions. Last year, K0HRV received an ARDC grant for the Amateur Radio Evangelist project, aimed at attending conferences to introduce attendees to amateur radio as a lifelong hobby. Recently, the evangelists made their first stop at Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE XV), where Dan Romanchik (KB6NU) gave a well-received talk titled Ham Radio for Hackers, where he discussed amateur radio basics, showcased amateur radio projects interesting to hackers, and provided information on getting an amateur radio license. The next day, Dan gave a one-day Technician class to an engaged audience who readily asked questions, followed by a testing session, where 25 hackers got their Technician ticket! To learn more about Amateur Radio Evangelist at HOPE XV, check out Dan’s blog post, as well as a related blog post from Hackaday.

Onward and upward

Even thought the grant was supposed to cover only four conferences, the Ham Radio Village treasurer thinks we can squeeze in a fifth. So, I’ll be headed to Provo, UT for SaintCon in a week and a half, and after that, possibly B-Sides Delaware in early November. That’s a lot of teaching in just over a month, but I really love doing it. In fact, I’m planning to submit another grant proposal for next year and ask for enough funds for six of these events.