Pictures from the 2001 Boy Scout Merit Badge College, December 8, 2001

Report from Robert, KE4MCL:

hello all

the boyscout merit badge college at barbara goldman high school went over very well. joe had aprox 13 in his class and MANY more stopped by throughout the day to find out what we were doing. we got almost 30 kids on the air.

our station consisted of an hf rig and power supply brought in by jason from the city of coral gables, ray's aprs station with laptop and my "scout box" which contained am/fm broadcast, cd, 2m, 440, cb and built in power supply. lee graciously brought in a portable shade tent and some chairs. antennas were a wire hf antenna strung up in the trees, a military mast with a vhf antenna and the vhf nmo antenna on the scout box

the field station was a success drawing more kids than the initial class did. we had qso's on vhf and on hf. the kids got introduced to vhf and hf phone and also to aprs. aprs turned out to be a big hit with the kids. more often than not we would get a "wow! cool!" out of them when we showed them what aprs did. the scout box was a hit with many of the adults prompting quite a few questions of what was in it and what it did.

this event was a great way to introduce ham radio to an interested and captive audience. i think we "made" at least 3 new soon to be hams today
which definitely made it worth the effort..

i'd like to thank those who showed up to help.. jason, joe, lee, wendy, ray and sam who took care of getting us a good spot amongst other things. i would also like to thank those that took the time to qso with us.. jessee, tom, dennis, lee, and frank just to name a few.

73
robert cruz
ke4mcl

07/15/2003 02:30:37 AM