On 04 Nov, 2 members of the CCARC set up shop at the St. Mary’s STEM festival, which was being hosted at the St. Mary’s Fairgrounds. This event is actually coordinated by the St. Mary’s Board of Ed and is used to introduce young and old alike to the various STEM related activities they could become involved in.
Rob (N2OMC) and Bob (KB3KOW) coordinated and set up across from the SMAS which was headed up by Jeff (KB3SPH), Pam (KB3SWS) and Charles (AA3WS). The set up consisted of one HF radio connected to a G5RV hung in an inverted ‘V’
and a second all band FT-817 radio connected to a ground plain.
At the other end of the table was two morse code keys and oscillators along with a Raspberry Pi with a CW translator written in the programming language of ‘Scratch” which is a graphical programming language aimed at youngsters and often used at schools in the lower grades.
Rob confirmed everything was working by making a few contacts, however, Murphy struck and while tuning, the radio went dead. Charles was asked to take a look and it was determined that after many decades of use, the power supply had finally decided to give up the ghost. Jeff then came to the rescue with a jump start battery pack and using a few quarters, Charles got things connected and we were back on the air.
Emergency power
The event officially opened at 1000 but it was close to 1100 before we saw any significant number of people coming past our area, but once they started, we seemed to have a steady flow of interested youth and adults.
The Morse Code seemed to be a big draw and we had anyone who wanted to, try to send their name via code. All were successful but there was one young lady who on the first visit wouldn’t talk to us or make eye contact. He mom brought her back later on to try CW. After she got her name sent, she looked up and asked what else she could send and Rob spent time getting a bus number, favorite color and the name of the cat on her
knit hat. At one point she was even instructing the other youth on how to send code.
The voice operations were met with a luke-warm reception and many didn’t appear to be interested, however, when Rob swapped out voice for Digital, the interest level increased and more youth sat down to see what was going on with the PC.
Rob was able able to engage several adults, many who are active with some form of communications program for the military or were themselves past military communicators.
We also had a ‘fly by’ from Bob (NW3M) who provided a few pictures from his lofty vantage point:
Fairgrounds from the air
The SMAS group
As with any event involving youth, we have some thoughts for next year on how to make it better and maybe engage more youth…