Radio Scouting
Saturday’s weather started out a bit rough for those practicing amateur radio outdoors in the elements but that didn’t stop Andrew Shead (W5AWS) and Jack Conway (W5JHC) from heading out to Camp Garland to setup a portable operations demonstration to scouters at the 2022 Council Camporee! This couldn’t have been accomplished without support from the TARC trailer headed up by Steve Childers (KF5VCQ) broadcasting under the W5IAS callsign at the Claremore Hamfest. This also couldn’t have been done without Paul Teel (WB5ANX) securing our spot at another council event and Mark Adams (WA5MA) providing flyers and QSL cards for those that wanted to talk. We also had a support from fellow TARC member Glen Singer (KA5GRP) who just happened to be out at the camporee working and helped provide some timely relief with the flood of scouts that were coming in!! We handed out 35 First time flyers to those who wanted a reminder item, but we had so many more that stopped by to talk on the radio and ask great questions. Even a few scouting parents took some time to talk on the air to say hello!
Scouts were introduced to a ham favorite, Fox Hunting! This lead to many questions about building things and a quick discussion about building radios, antennas, computers, and much more. They were then introduced to emergency communications and our quick ability with a battery and a radio to get on the air quickly and start sending messages locally or around the world! Kids were shown and told that we were even able to make FT8 contacts down in South America while they were walking around that day! I think many thought they were talking to Steve from South America even though he was just an hour up the road in Claremore! We showed them a go bag and some of the things we have in them, talked about what it takes to get your first level technicians license from the FCC and what that all means as you test up to bigger classes. We even let them know that those little radios you buy at Walmart require a license too! We also let them know that we are great communicators and can send our own version of a text message via people by using radio grams. And if they really like pictures and videos, there is a section in the hobby for that. If making a contact at 10,000 miles wasn’t enough to make them smile we told them you could even talk to the space station or bounce signals off of satellites in space, but that’s only 254 miles away. But those contacts are a lot harder as they are moving a lot faster in orbit! They finished their tour of our portable operations with a 2-5 minute chat with another amateur operator and with TARC communication trailer under the call sign W5IAS and got to try their use at Q-codes if they wanted to.
Many thanks to all that were involved in helping out and we can always use more people for the next one! If you are interested in volunteering for the next event reach out to W5JHC or WB5ANX and let them know you are interested in helping out! It is great and fun way to spend time with the favorite hobby we all love and a great way to introduce amateur radio to the youth, not to mention getting to broadcast from some great facilities that not everyone gets to!