My Week at the ARRL Teacher Institute TI-1 in Newington, Connecticut

Being new to Amateur Radio I had no idea what to expect when I signed up for the ARRL Teacher Institute on Wireless Technology.  I only assumed that my week would be filled with radio communications and how to bring the concepts behind the radio sciences to the classroom.  What I got was a room full of new educator friends, connections were made to names and faces at ARRL, and a week of first class instruction on basic electronics and wireless technologies that I could bring back to my local radio club and students in the classroom.

From the first morning arrival at the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) Headquarters I was embraced with kind greetings, welcoming faces, and an energy of excitement from the ARRL staff.  Upon entering the conference room at Headquarters where our instruction would occur we were greeted by a pile of resources that we would use over the course of the week.  For a novice in electronics and a newbie in the amateur radio world, the scene was quite overwhelming.

The first morning began with our instructor, Tommy Gober (N5DUX), introducing himself and others at the ARRL.  We were introduced to the two members of the education department Kris Bickell (K1BIC) and Ally Riedel (KM3ALF) who were responsible for putting together the impressive week of professional development.  I learned that of the other ten participants, five were also licensed in Amateur Radio and by the end of the week we would welcome two more participants to the ranks.  According to the Institute this may have been the highest number of participants that were licensed Amateurs in the Institute’s history.

By midway through the first day of the institute we were already delving deep into the educational context for wireless technology, basic electronics, and soldering.  While I had some experience in these areas with my work in Amateur Radio and my experience at Space Camp the summer prior, this was just as exciting as experiencing it for the first time.  We opened our new Breadboard, connecting a circuit filled with wires, resistors, and LEDs, to help us understand the functions of our new Multimeter.  By the end of day one we opened our ARRL designed clock kits to accomplish our first task.  We were tasked with putting together the components of the clock from a kit and soldering the back of each piece.  This was supposed to become homework, but all participants were so excited to be working on this project that we all stayed at ARRL an extra two hours that night to complete our clocks.  The next morning, we were able to put the finishing touches of the base on the clock and plug them in to see that they worked.

On day two, we opened our new Picoscopes and began to play around with two different circuit boards designed to allow us to see the various waves that occur and how they can be manipulated.  The Picoscopes being digital allowed us to download a program to our laptops quickly for a great interface to our new Oscilloscopes.   Day two also allowed us to take a tour of ARRL headquarters where we met members of the VEC department, walked through publishing, and the QSL bureau.  The tour continued through a museum of radio history and ended in station W1AW.

Day three begin with the introduction of the Arduino boards and the Bo-Bot Shield Robot build.  If things were not already exciting, this is where the excitement in the participants and staff at ARRL became amped up.  Participants followed instructions to build their bots from scratch.  Once robots were built, Tommy Gober, led participants with the use of their Picoscopes through making the proper electronic connections on their bot’s breadboard.  For this day, participants also downloaded the Arduino software onto their computers to begin to learn the C++ code that would allow them to progress to advance operations of their robots in the coming days.  By the end of day three, all participants’ heads were whirling from the extensive knowledge they had gained in the advanced instruction of coding they had in just a short time period.

Day four and five concentrated more on the coding of the robots and the science behind infrared remote controllers that would ultimately allow us to drive our robots with a Sony TV remote.  Teachers learned to program the Arduino to display numeric digits 0 through 9 in progression, learned how to get their robots to move forward, backward, turn left, and turn right, program their robots with several lines of code to run a maze, and then learned to program the robots to be able to avoid obstacles through the use of LED sensors and other sensors like those used to collect data for APRS packets.  By the end of day five the participants were able to circle their robots together in the lobby of ARRL and have Tommy use one Sony remote to orchestrate the robots doing the Hokey Pokey.

One other exciting event occurred on day four that needs to be mentioned because of how special it was to the participants.  The teachers of the institute could go into station W1AW to operate the various radio stations.  Participants operated W1AW on 20 and 17 meters as well as, digital modes and Echolink stations.  Many participants were able to make connections with people from the local radio clubs.  Participants were able to ask Joe Carcia(NJ1Q), the W1AW station manager all the questions that came to their heads.  A few of us were able to take a handheld radio to the parking lot and use the 2-meter band and our own call signs to contact W1AW.  By doing this we would be in the station logs and be guaranteed a QSL card from the station.

Dan (AC1EN)