Tag: arrl

My ARRL Youth Editor Columns Are Finally Together

I took the time to collect all my ARRL youth columns into one location: Right here! The ARRL doesn’t host these columns in a central location (although I think they should be a staple of the ARRL Youth Page) so hopefully this helps.

You can also go to the Youth@HamRadio.fun page in the Blogs drop down in the menu.

The list below is chronological starting from April 23, 2011 to May 26, 2013. Unfortunately after my departure from the youth editorship, the ARRL hasn’t opened the position back up, so these are the last of their kind until further notice.

School Club Roundup – October 17-21!

It’s October, time for School Club Roundup!

The fall School Club Roundup (SCR) is October 17-21, 2016. All educational institutions from grade to graduate school are encouraged to participate in the week-long on-the-air operating event. More information and rules is available at http://www.arrl.org/school-club-roundup.

The following logging programs support SCR:

Bonus points for using social media – Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and reddit to promote your school’s operation!

Jk, there’s no real bonus points, BUT that shouldn’t stop you from promoting your activities! You can also upload photos and text to the ARRL Soapbox.

Also, read this article by Scott Westerman W9WSW. Its a FANTASTIC to-do list for college clubs but can be applied to every ham radio club.

 
Arrows graphic in logo by Freepik from Flaticon is licensed under CC BY 3.0. Made with Logo Maker
 

Collegiate Ham Radio is on fire today!

Today was a maelstrom of emails, reddit posts, facebook messages, ARRL articles, some more emails….all thanks to this article: http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-acting-as-catalyst-in-college-radio-club-revitalization-campaign

I posted it to the amateurradio subreddit, where it got some discussion. Then, another post, nearly simultaneously popped up on reddit regarding interest in a “University/Colleges on the Air” – of course they couldn’t call it Schools on the Air, as that would compete with the other SOTA, but that’s besides the point.

There are a lot of college and university amateur radio clubs out there, both active and defunct. There have been attempts to collect interest, either through collegiate contests or sub-contests (such as the Intercollegiate Championship that hasn’t been going on since 2011), online communities (like CollegeARC developed by Brent and Bryce Salmi from Rochester Institute of Technology K2GXT, but went defunct sometime in mid to late 2013 after they graduated), and now the Dayton Hamvention Collegiate Dinner and the Collegiate Ham Radio Operators Facebook Group.

I have great interest vested in these topics. Throughout my ARRL Youth Editorship, I poked and prodded ARRL to do more to promote amateur radio to colleges, and vice versa.  It cam in the form of free books, promotional materials, and licensing materials, but never have they showed the support they are featuring in the article.

ARRL provides a large amount of grants and scholarships totaling many tens of thousands of dollars – or more – but many of these scholarships often go unclaimed! This is because too many don’t know about them.

Promoting amateur radio in colleges is a huge untapped resource for both the hobby, and the STEM economy. Every technical job I had was resultant of something ham radio related, and it’s obvious that it the hobby has huge merits in electrical and computer engineering and computer science.

Plus, as mentioned in the article, colleges are super competitive! College football wouldn’t be a thing if they weren’t!

Although I don’t agree with the name “Ivy + Amateur Radio” as an all-inclusive invitation to colleges and universities across the world to join up, I still think the ARRL is doing collegiate ham radio a great service to show support, especially from the CEO level. After all, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.

I hope to see something great come of this! Conference championships? Colleges/Universities on the Air? A yearlong QSO party for colleges? Incorporating “college” category into large ARRL contests like sweepstakes and ARRL DX? Revamping school club roundup? Tons of ideas.

Please feel free to contact me at n0ssc@arrl.net or comment below if you wish to talk college ham radio. Or send your support straight to the ARRL CEO Tom Gallagher NY2RF, himself!