YARC Youth Contesting Program Round Two: IARU HF Championships

YARC’s Youth Contesting Program is back in action for the IARU HF Championships. Signup now!

YARC’s Youth Contesting Program (YCP) is a weekend program for groups of young amateur radio contesters throughout the US and Canada to meet up at a nearby-as-possible contest-grade stations during the large HF contests.

Our previous YCP was somewhat successful, in that we didn’t entirely fail – we had one successful and rewarding pairing between Patrick KE8KLC and the Voice of America Museum Amateur Radio Club WC8VOA. It helped that he was only a 15 minute drive away, and that the VOA volunteers pulled in a lot of hours preparing for the event. Our biggest pitfall was a low number of both host station and youth contesters. There’s only one way to get more applicants, and that’s to try it again!

The 2019 IARU HF Championships take place 13-14 July 2019 from 1200 Saturday to 1159 Sunday UTC. It’s both a CW and Phone contest, and is one of the years biggest.

It works like this – we will attempt to pair a small group (up to 4) of young contesters interested in operating with a “big gun” station owner interested in hosting the youth group. The contesters will operate from the station, and the host has the option to help the youth improve their skills, provide advice, and even operate alongside. We will try to keep it such that young hams will only require a relatively short drive (ideally no more than 5 hours) to keep travel costs low. As such, this will require the participation of as many operators and hosts as possible, but it might so happen that a valid match may not exist. With your help, it shouldn’t be hard to find pairings within an hour’s drive.

All you have to do right now is signup! If you’re a young ham (or know a young ham) (under age 27 or so) with at least a little bit of contesting experience, and you’d be interested in spending a weekend in July at a contest-grade ham radio station, OR if you’re the owner of such a station, sign up at the Google form here: https://yarc.world/ycp/ or scroll down to the bottom to find the form there.

YARC YCP is inspired by the efforts of YOTA’s YCP, as well as Team Exuberance and we hope to inspire a big chunk of young hams into becoming the greatest contesters of the 21st century.

Note – since we’re trying to keep this an affordable event for our young ops, we require that the station is within a 3 hour drive. And since the North America is a big place, we can’t promise that you’ll be selected as a host or operator, especially if either no young ops signup nearby your station or there’s no station near young operators. Since this is our first second try, we probably still have a lot to learn about this, so bear with us!

Thanks,

Sterling, NØSSC
YARC Programs & Outreach Dude

Announcing: YARC Youth Contesting Program!

On behalf of the Young Amateurs Radio Club (YARC) I’m pleased to announce the:

Youth Contesting Program!

YARC’s Youth Contesting Program (YCP) is a weekend program for groups of young amateur radio contesters throughout the US and Canada to meet up at a nearby-as-possible “big gun stations” during the 2019 CQ World-Wide WPX Contest taking place 30-31 March 2019. It will hopefully enable a new dimension of the hobby to young hams who have contested a little before, and set a new precedent for the welcoming of a new generation of radiosport aficionados.

It works like this – we will attempt to pair a small group (up to 4) of young contesters interested in operating with a “big gun” station owner interested in hosting the youth group. The contesters will operate from the station, and the host has the option to help the youth improve their skills, provide advice, and even operate alongside. We will try to keep it such that young hams will only require a relatively short drive (ideally no more than 5 hours) to keep travel costs low. As such, this will require the participation of as many operators and hosts as possible, but it might so happen that a valid match may not exist. We will try our best and work to make this a better program in the future!

YARC YCP is inspired by the efforts of YOTA’s YCP, as well as Team Exuberance and we hope to inspire a big chunk of young hams into becoming the greatest contesters of the 21st century.

SIGNUP HERE

If you’re a young ham (or know a young ham) (under age 27 or so) with at least a little bit of contesting experience, and you’d be interested in spending March 30-31 (CQ World-Wide WPX SSB) at a contest-grade ham radio station, OR if you’re the owner of such a station, sign up at the Google form here: https://yarc.world/ycp/ (or scroll to the bottom to find the survey conveniently embedded!)

Note – because we’re trying to keep costs low by making this a drivable event for our young ops, we can’t promise that you’ll be selected as a host or operator, especially if either no young ops signup nearby your station or there’s no station near young operators. Since this is our first try, we probably have a lot to learn about this, so bear with us!

Thanks,

Sterling, N0SSC
YARC Programs & Outreach Dude

Standing Desks for Ham Shacks? (and where I’ve been)

Update

I’ve been quiet lately. I went on an European 3-week vacation (Prague, Krakow, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris), which meant I got behind on work stuff, so I’ve been busy catching up.

I was on HamRadioNow in a Phasing Line/HRN mashup. Check that out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31LUEjNgnU

The Phasing Line podcast is still moving along, now with a Patreon! Apparently, we did something that people enjoy, and I think we’ll keep doing that. We pre-recorded a lot of episodes over the break, but never got around to editing them, so beware some episodes may seem out of date. I hope you don’t find that to be a problem!

I’ll be speaking at the St Louis Suburban Radio Club (SLSRC) Winterfest hamfest on January 28 about YOTA and Youth Ham Radio. This is the first time I’m actually hosting a forum, so that’s pretty cool. I’ll be up against Bob Heil to put it in perspective! I’ll try to record my presentation and post it on my YouTube.

I’ll also be at the Orlando Hamcation February 10 through 12, with Aaron Boots AA0RN, who’s a rising W0EEE star. They’ll be having a collegiate forum at 3pm in Classroom 1. I don’t have anything to present, but I want to be there to represent the ARRL Collegiate Amateur Radio Initiative (CARI) and check out the 2nd biggest hamfest in the US. I’ll also try to record it. See http://www.hamcation.com/forums/ for more forum info.

That’s about as far as I’ve planned this year. I definitely cannot attend Hamvention (here’s why) but I’m looking at attending some other bigger hamfests (like Friedrichshafen, Pacificon, HamCom, NEAR-fest, anything else listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamfest) since Jesten earned me 110,000 Southwest Air and 125,000 American Air points (leftover after our Europe trip). With that said, if you want me to come talk about youth at your hamfest, let me know sooner than later, before I have to spend 110% of my time helping my fiancee plan our wedding (Oct 2018 baby!).

Finally, what I came here to write:

W6LG inspired me for this post. On November 2, 2016, he had a pulmonary embolism and heart attack, nearly killing him. He survived, and is back to making great videos on YouTube.

I’m 25, so you might not understand why I’m posting about this, but it’s surprisingly relevant. I’ve been an “official adult” for 2 years now, and I’ve noticed a few changes.

  1. I have little to no activity daily. I walk between 1000 and 5000 steps a day, measured by my iPhone/Pebble smartwatch
  2. My posture sucks
  3. I’m about thirty pounds overweight, and eating 1,500 cal/day for the last 6 months has made for some slow progress:
  4. My neck and back hurts

It’s obvious why these 4 things are happening. It’s because I’m sitting for 8 to 10 hours a day at a desk. So I stood up. Literally. I found some boxes to prop my monitors and keyboard up at properly ergonomic heights, and (aside from my feet hurting) things started just feeling better.

Then I got a newer, better chair and ditched the standing desk boxes. I’m quickly realizing standing is clearly helpful, because the same problems came up, even though my new chair was more ergonomic.

When I watched W6LG’s video, I immediately realized that I have never seen a ham radio station on a standing desk. Jim’s right – we hams spend a shitload of time sitting behind our radios, DXing and contesting, not giving a single thought to the clots slowly building up in our butts, the plaque building up around our hearts, and the atrophy of muscles that once made it so easy to climb a flight of stairs.

The easiest way to fight disease exacerbated by lack of activity is to stand up, stretch, and walk. Of course, if you’re able to stand, this works, but if you require a wheelchair or mobility scooter, follow your individual doctor’s advice on staying healthy.

Standing desks aren’t cheap, but milk crates and boxes did fine for me. Ikea also has several DIY-methods of making standing desks a thing for your station or workbench. And even if you don’t have a standing desk, set a timer to remind yourself to stretch. You can also use apps like Stand Up! for iOS or Randomly RemindMe for Android.

Additionally, the team at Consumers Advocate has poured hundreds of hours into researching different models of standing desks and converters, doing the hard work so you don’t have to. They reviewed and researched models for all budgets, and conveniently  put the maximum lifting capacity of each desk so you don’t overburden it with your SO2R FT-3000DX  station and 1.5kW linear amplifier should you want to lift that up while you stand!

Consumers Advocate Logo
Click me to review standing desks!

Do you have a standing desk at your hamshack? Send me your standing desk shack pics at sterling@n0ssc.com!

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