I asked my son to come to a Ham club, he was 12 at the time. The youngest at the club was 60 (That was myself)! My son (Adam) said, where are all the young kids?...We went again, and actually found one at 16 years old, N5TIP (Samuel), this fellow ended up being Adam's tutor for 1.5 years (Adam attends University, accepted at age 13) ! Adam at 12 years old, took the Tech exam for his Dad (NN2X) and passed. It took about a week...Even less time... There are kids like KD9POK (Becca) and KD9LFZ (Leah) are rising stars in the Ham community. We need many more of them. Leah's father is a youtuber for Ham radio, and this rubbed off on Leah I was interviewed for the President of ARRL, I indicated that I would focus on the "Show and Tell" at private schools. It works! I did this here is the North Dallas area and worked well. This is what show ARRL should focus on...ARRL, should provide a mission to Ham clubs across the USA to do the same... otherwise, the next CQ call we receive will be from our graves NN2X Tom
Sorry to hear, I bet you would have done a bang up job too. Being said though bribery will get you anywhere so a case of Geritol to the board member's and you would have been in like flint.
I've got a problem, now. Too many responses (!! positive) to my post on the site Next Door, which I relayed in my message above. Question for Quin or anyone else . . . Now that I've got a bunch of people who are interested and asking for help in getting started, where do I take it? I can't refer them to my local ARC, because as I mentioned here, I had ZERO positive feelings about that. It might be OK later, if I want to join the old boys club. But for now, I've got three or four (guys, no gals) people a lot like me who need help. Should I bring them together? I was thinking of taking my IC-705 to the local park and setting up on a table, inviting them over for a bit of a chat about ham radio. Could show them CW, but I don't want to scare them with code. Can show them 2 meter local activity, which is a lot of fun in my area, and some 17 or 20 meter SSB from the park bench. Bring some magazines and books to lend out . . . Thoughts??
Recognizing most people who say they're interested won't show up when something actually happens, you'll probably be ok. Agree on leaving out the code as that's more of a specialist niche and you want to introduce them to topics they're more natively familiar with. Which mode and band you pick is more dependent on what is a active around you. Maybe 2m FM (repeater and simplex) and 20m SSB to give them two very different avenues (and explain the fundamental differences in non-technical, jargon-free language). If you're into POTA, doing an activation would generate a lot of activity quickly so you can show people activity. Going out cold might not garner as much. Some magazines and books to lend would be good, but leave the deep technical tomes at home. Bring stuff with a focus on ham-based activities, articles about getting started, etc. Make it fun and interesting, deemphasize the deeply technical and difficult stuff for now, they'll be more open to that after they're hooked on the fun stuff. Chris
Great advice Chris. I hope they show up . . . I'll see about the POTA idea, and particularly if there's a drive up and park scenario somewhere in there. I don't want to get too far up a mountainside, etc. It would be great to do an activation and get a lot of attention. I fear getting on some band, doing a CQ and getting nothing back in return, with faces looking at me wondering what's going on and where all the excitement is? Dave
That's why I suggested POTA. Even using a 10w portable transceiver and a simple wire antenna, once I self-spot for POTA, I start getting contacts and end up getting 15+ in about 10 minutes. I've had people calling me before I can even get organized and calling CQ myself. If you're not registered as an activator, head over to Parks on the Air | POTA | Parks program for amateur radio, sign up, then go do a dry run on your own so you're aware of the process and workflow before doing it for an audience. Chris
Thanks for the kind words! (N1IPU) /Mark! I was surely ready to be the ARRL President, but I don't know if I would last that long...I am truly would have stream line the process, and focus nearly 100% of my time growing the Ham population, (Targeting young kids, through Ham Clubs / Private schools). That would had been fun (I like the show and tell aspect...) When I did this last time, I included math, geography, history and of course Ham Radio.We would go to the Private School, and asked the kids where they wanted to speak to, (Which country /Let say Saudi Arabia), From there we would start off with the VOACAP software, to illustrate what frequency and what time a day we could connect (This would also indicate what mode to use)...Then from there, we did the math to design an antenna, I used a 2 element Yagi ( Hex Beam), using 400 Watts, for the mode of SSB...The kids loved it...Actually the parents, got involved..Of course I would speak with Hams in Saudi Arabia (Prior to the test). When the actual QSO occurred the kids loved it... (These kids ranged from 5 years old to 13 years old). Also did this with VK3MO (Ian) in Australia, that was very cool! You could not miss with his 5/5/5/5/5 Mono Bander... Forget public schools it truly to restrictive, I tried like heck! The private schools were eager, and the parents were as well. Cheers / NN2X Tom
