Ham Radio - A contact sport

On Saturday, my dad (KØGVG) and I offered a Radio Merit Badge session for several Iowa Boy Scouts. We believe that, done properly, this is a great way to expose kids (and often their dads) to what could be a first step into the world of ham radio.

Over the past 5 years or so we’ve been asked to offer a Radio Merit Badge session as a part of the local "Merit Badge University." MBU is organized into a annual Saturday event in which scouts are allowed to choose two badges to work towards: one in a morning session and another in the afternoon. Our Radio Merit Badge session is offered in the morning session to the kids that choose it (over other badges offered at the same time such as woodworking, computers, electronics, etc.).

As this was the third or fourth year that we’ve offered the badge, we’re starting to get into a routine. We try to make improvements to the course each year and this year’s offering might have been our best yet. We make a special effort to explain that ham radio is a multi-faceted hobby that offers something for everyone. We discuss as many of these facets as time allows. We also let them know that ham radio can be a lot of fun and we get them in on some of that with on-air contacts.

There were seven scouts in this year’s crop. All the kids were great and seemed to be genuinely interested in what we had to say. They asked great questions and were "engaged" during the presentation. In that group, at least two seemed to be particularly interested and made comments at the end like "man, I want to get a radio like that". One youngster asked about upcoming ham radio exam sessions and where he could get more information on getting a ham radio license. That’s a good sign that our hobby does offer something for today’s youth if we can just get through the many distractions they face (X-Box, sports, and girls… not necessarily in that order).

The scouts are asked to do some preparation work prior to arriving for the badge session. The work follows along with the Radio Merit Badge book and asks some questions on radio basics.

This year, we added a powerpoint series that I had stumbled onto. K2GW did an excellent job putting this together and we’ll use it again. We also added the Hello video from the ARRL.

This year’s agenda looked like this:

• 8:30 Boy Scouts arrive.
• 8:30 to 9:00 Station tour, Hello video.
• 9:00 to 9:40 Powerpoint Module 1: Radio Basics

  •What is Radio?

  •Types of Radio Services

  •Call Signs & Identification

  •Regulations

  •Phonetic Alphabet

  •Electromagnetic Spectrum

  •Propagation

• 9:40 to 10:10 Powerpoint module 2: Electronics and safety

  •Conductors & Insulators

  •Types of Electrical Circuits

  •Block Diagrams of Radios

  •Schematic Diagrams

  •Electronic Components & Symbols

  •Radio Safety

  •How Radio Carries Information

• 10:10 to 10:20 Tour of the Antenna Farm
• 10:20 to 10:25 Donuts & Juice
• 10:25 to 10:45 Module 3: Amateur Radio

  •Amateur Radio Licenses

  •Amateur Radio Activities

  •Q Signals & Abbreviations

  •Types of Amateur stations

  •Repeaters

  •Identification

  •Emergency Procedures

  •NOAA Weather Radio

  •Logging a contact

• 10:45 to 11:30 On-air Contacts
• 11:30 to 11:45 Pictures of my ham radio tower project/Wrap-up/badge paperwork

It’s a lot to get done in just a few hours, but we always have a good time doing this and we hope that, if nothing else, some more folks are introduced to the positive elements of our hobby.