Articles and other information about Ham Radio activities for young people. Our youth activities include GOTA events, our High Altitude Balloon project, help getting licensed and more.
On Saturday, January 7th the Nashua Area Radio Club participated in the ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air. Fred (AB1OC) and Anita (AB1QB) opened up their station for any youth that wanted to come and participate! We also had snap circuits available with help from Greg (W1TEN) and CW paddles for those who wanted to practice up on their Morse code.
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us as it was a snowy day with slippery road conditions. We had a couple of youth not able to make the event due to the weather, but we still had a few show and they were very enthusiastic!
Connor (KC1GGX) started the event off by operating on 20 meters and made several contacts. Despite having a little “mic fright” he warmed up nicely and didn’t want to share the mic when it was someone else’s turn!
Abby (AB1BY) stopped by and had two friends – Samay and Jaegen – from her Destination Imagination team with her. Abby got the ball rolling for her friends and showed them how to create a pile up – just have a young YL voice and the calls start coming! She then turned the mic over to Samay and Jaegen and helped them work through their first QSOs. They soon were comfortable with the phonetic alphabet and they had fun spelling their names during their QSOs.
Despite the weather, the kids had a great time and it was a lot of fun to see the youth in our club improve their operating skills and watch the new kids make their first contacts!
Mark you calendars for Sunday, June 18th when the next ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air takes place. I feel pretty comfortable saying there won’t be any snow… but, this is New England.
Several members of our club have been working on a High Altitude Balloon Project to promote STEM interest and learning by young people. Our project team currently includes the following folks:
Other interested club members are welcome to join us.
We want to provide a STEM learning opportunity and project to be planned and executed by young people ages 10 – 16. We are actively seeking engagement and support from local schools, Scout Troops and other youth organizations to help us with this project.
Our goals for the project include:
Building and launching a high altitude balloon carrying Amateur Radio to near space and back
Enabling young people to plan and execute the project with help and guidance from members of the Nashua Area Radio Club and supporting adults from organizations that wish to assist us
Helping young people gain STEM-based experience and learnings by handling all phases of the project including:
Planning the flight, the balloon, and its payload
Building the balloon and testing it on the ground
Launching, tracking and recovering the balloon’s payload
Analysis of the flight data and the creation of a presentation to be delivered to fellow students and other interested groups
We plan to introduce new technology, experiments, and flight elements and develop team member skills and expertise across multiple launches. Later phases of the project are expected to include design and construction of additional payload electronics, high altitude/longer duration flights, and additional on-board atmospheric science experiments.
Typical High Altitude Balloon System
Our goals for the initial flight mission of this project will include:
Building a helium filled balloon which carries a payload of < 4 lbs. to altitudes in excess of 90,000 ft (27,400 m)
Parachute controls decent rate after balloon bursts
Capturing a video of flight using on-board GoPro video camera(s)
Flying an on-board APRS transmitter allows tracking from the ground via Amateur 2m APRS and aprs.fi
Flight computer plus APRS provides altitude, position and temperature data throughout the flight
Anyone with a device that has internet access and a web browser will be able to track the flight
Augmenting the APRS system with commercial satellite tracker to assure successful recovery of our payload by the project team
High Altitude Balloons
The balloon is filled with enough Helium to carry its payload to a target altitude in excess of 90,000 ft and then burst. A parachute will deploy to control the rate at which the payload descends and will ensure a controlled safe and soft landing.
Payload Components
The payload will be built around a light-weight platform which will carry a Video Camera, a Flight Computer/APRS Transmitter, and a Commercial Satellite Tracker. The camera will capture a video of the flight and the flight computer will record altitude, temperature and position data and relay this information to the ground via APRS on 2m. A commercial satellite tracker would be included to ensure we could locate the payload once it is back on the ground.
High Altitude Flight Planning
A key part of the project will involve planning the target altitude and flight path for our balloon. There are some good resources available to help us do this. Check out the Balloon Performance Calculator here. Tools also exist to estimate a balloon’s flight path and track based on Jetstream and other flight parameters.
Once we recover our balloon payload, we will guide our young team members in analyzing the data from the flight to help them to learn about atmospheric conditions and to prepare to share the results along with the video captured with classmates and other interested groups. You can get an idea of the video that we can expect below.
We are working to raise the necessary funds to support our project. We are counting on the generosity of our members and friends to help us. Please consider making a donation here.
Since the summer time, many of you have seen a flurry of activity on the website regarding our efforts to attract more young people and especially kids into the hobby. And let’s not kid ourselves, this is by no means an easy feat. It’s a legitimately difficult problem that many clubs all over the country are facing and is large enough such that it is recognized by the ARRL. It’s the lifeblood of the hobby — passing the torch on, teaching what we can and what we know. In my humble view, I feel an almost civic duty to actively recruit these younger folks and what is advantageous to us is that we can sell the club and its activities under the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) movement. This means we can open up the study of electronics, robotics, radios, physics, and the AdS/CFT correspondence (relating 4D strongly coupled quantum gauge theories to 5D classical string theories in curved spacetimes…pretty trivial stuff) to the younger crowd. So now that I’ve set the stage for you, the remainder of this blog will talk about what we, your fearless youth outreach crew (see figure below), have been up to.
The youth outreach crew
Our activities were planned from 9 am – 5 pm on November 19. The day, of course, started earlier — around 830am where we began to set up the ubiquitous GOTA station at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock facility in Nashua as well as the litany of other activities we had planned. We had decided that the best set of activities would be:
GOTA station (the infamous IC-7300 making another appearance)
Electronic snap circuit stations where folks could experiment with the projects supplied with the kits
Morse code station where kids could follow along with “The Rhythm of the Code” and then eventually build up to sending more difficult messages. (Disclaimer: This video is annoying and useful all at the same time. Consumer beware :)
QSL card station: After making a QSO, we posted the locale on a world map next to the station and printed out a memento of the contact on the back of our NARC QSL cards!
Foxhunting: Everyone loves a good fox hunt. From ham radio enthusiasts to Quentin T. Butternuts, Esq. and his gaggle of British compatriots (No foxes were hurt in the hunt itself).
Some pics of our activities are below:
GOTA stationQSL card station manned by AnitaTony rock’in a pose next to the snap circuits. He’s practicing for the Ralph Lauren Winter collectionPerhaps at the point of insanity from the Rhythm of the codeGreg (W1TEN), and his two little ones enjoying a fox huntAbby and one of our guests, Kailas, enjoying a fox hunt in the awesome weather. It almost kind of reminds me of the Abbey Road cover.
Volunteers present at the event, from the club, were: Brian (AB1ZO), Jamey (KC1ENX), Abby (KC1FFX), Connor (KC1GGX), Fred (AB1OC), Anita (AB1QB), Tony (KC1DXL), Wayne (KB1HYL). All in all, we enjoyed hosting 13 people! 7 internal to our club and 6 external. Our internal members were Greg (W1TEN) and his 2 kids, Ira (KC1EMJ) and his grandson, and Don (KC1CRK) with his wife (they LOVED the snap circuits…thank you!).
I think we had a hit! Two families in particular (new to the world of amateur radio) stayed with us for most of the day and we were very grateful for their participation! They graciously provided us with additional avenues to explore and other people to contact to engender more interest in our target population. Our numbers from outside NARC are beginning to grow, and as such, we are always looking for help/advice from you, our club members.
Lastly, we did learn several lessons from this event.
We need to continue to proselytize our message. We understand that not everyone is available to come volunteer and help out physically at the events themselves. What we do need however that is a HUGE help is having our members spread our word, flyers, pamphlets, and any literature we can distribute. The two people I would really like to recognize for their contributions are John (W1SMN) and Tony Rizzolo’s (KC1DXL) wife Josephine. They really went to bat for us and sent out our flyers everywhere. Because of our event, we made new contacts with folks from the Boys and Girls Club in Nashua and also MakeIt labs in Nashua, as well as some local charter schools. We intend on bringing the fight to these places, do some demonstrations, and recruit more kids to do additional activities with us. All in all, in addition to what we are doing, we value your input, so please send an email to myself or Jamey (KC1ENX) with your thoughts.
Pick hands-on activities. I think one reason our activities at this event were successful is that the kids were engaged the whole time. Thinking down the road, we need to keep this momentum moving forward with well-thought out activities. Some of these which occurred to us were kit-building electronics afternoons. I could see this being fun during the Winter months. Projects with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, with some emphasis on amateur radio application. Or, even a high-altitude balloon build: we could imagine putting a transmitter on one of these and ask the kids to design/build/execute over the course of several weekends. (This is of course once achieving critical mass). The point is, we do not have to gear every activity towards amateur radio, but rather gear it towards the STEM aspects of the hobby that we all find appealing.
Get buy-in from the parents. The parents are the masters of their children’s schedule. If they feel the time is not worth it, our efforts are for naught. We need to remember while cultivating a child’s interest, we also need to do so for the parents.
Jamey and I will be regrouping in the coming weeks to figure out our next steps/strategies — both short-term and long-term. You will certainly see future blog posts from us, so please stay tuned and let us know if we can pique your curiosity to join us during some of our upcoming events.
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Connor (KC1GGX) started the event off by operating on 20 meters and made several contacts. Despite having a little “mic fright” he warmed up nicely and didn’t want to share the mic when it was someone else’s turn!
ds – Samay and Jaegen – from her Destination Imagination team with her. Abby got the ball rolling for her friends and showed them how to create a pile up – just have a young YL voice and the calls start coming! She then turned the mic over to Samay and Jaegen and helped them work through their first QSOs. They soon were comfortable with the phonetic alphabet and they had fun spelling their names during their QSOs.
, the kids had a great time and it was a lot of fun to see the youth in our club improve their operating skills and watch the new kids make their first contacts!
Mark you calendars for Sunday, June 18th when the next ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air takes place. I feel pretty comfortable saying there won’t be any snow… but, this is New England.
