ARRL Field Day is upon us and I wanted to share some thoughts about the mentoring and learning opportunities that Field Day can provide. Many Clubs and other groups here in New England are planning…
Field Day provides clubs and groups with a great opportunity to engage and mentor new and less experienced hams. I wanted to share some thoughts and ideas on how we can make mentoring a part of our Field Day activities. You can read more about some successful mentoring activities that have worked well as part of Field Day operations that we’ve been involved in via the link above.
I hope to work many of our readers during Field Day 2021!
The Nashua Area Radio Society (NARS), will be hosting a Ham Bootcamp on Saturday, September 7th from 9 AM until noon at the Northeastern HamXposition at Boxboro. Ham Bootcamp includes a series of hands-on activities designed to help newly licensed Technician and General class license holders get on the air and use their amateur radio license. It is also a great opportunity for prospective hams who are interested in seeing what the hobby has to offer….
Ham Bootcamp activities will be provided in two tracks – one for Technicians and prospective hams and one for General class licenses and higher.
Technician Track Activities
Putting together a Station for Repeaters – how to pick an HT and antenna
HT Programming Tutorials and Help
Getting Started with EchoLink
Making a Contact, joining a Repeater Net
Fox Hunting Demonstrations
Making contacts through Amateur Radio Satellites in Space
General Track Activities
Putting together an HF Station
Putting up a simple HF Antenna including coax and grounding choices
Software for your HF station
Operating on the HF bands using voice, morse code, and digital
Putting together a portable HF Station
How to find and work DX and QSL
… and more!
We will also be providing discount coupons for a kit build and for purchases at HRO to Ham Bootcamp participants.
Ham Bootcamp is free and it is available to all HamXpositon 2019 attendees. Participation in the hands-on training is limited to 100 people maximum and will be on a first-come, first-served basis, so arrive early to get a seat. Registration begins at 8 am.
If you are planning to attend the Northeastern HamXpostion 2019 @ Boxboro on September 7th, don’t miss this once-a-year opportunity to learn more about Amateur Radio, improve your station, expand your skills, and get on the air. See you at Ham Bootcamp!
It seems that Hams struggle a bit to get their HTs programmed with the right set of repeaters and other memory settings. The Nashua Area Radio Society will be offering a custom HT Programming Clinicat HamXposition @ Boxboro 2019 to help hams get their HT’s programmed…
I’d like to invite our readers who are planning to attend the Northeastern HamXposition 2019 @ Boxboro on September 7th and 8th to bring their HT. We will be providing an HT Programming Clinic at the show and we’d be happy to create a custom program for your HT and location. Our custom programs can also include FM Satellites, Foxes, and more!
The Nashua Area Radio Society put together a successful Amateur Radio Youth Exposition at the New England Amateur Radio Convention at Boxboro this year. Our exposition features over ten displays with hands-on activities…
Anita AB1QB and I are continuing to work along with the Nashua Area Radio Society to encourage young people to become licensed and join the Amateur Radio Service.
Anita and I have been working to grow the Amateur Radio Service through our work at the Nashua Area Radio Society. The Nashua Area Radio Society is a 501c(3) public charity whose mission is to:
Encourage and help people to become licensed and active in the Amateur Radio Service
Spark Interest among Young People in STEM Education and Careers through Ham Radio
Provide training and mentoring to enable our members to improve their technical and operating skills and to be prepared to assist in times of emergency
Sponsor on-air operating activities so that our members may practice and fully develop their operating skills and have fun with Ham Radio!
Students and Teachers Ready To Launch Their High-Altitude Balloon
The Nashua Area Radio Society has created many programs designed to provide STEM learning experiences and training through Amateur Radio. Some of these include:
Emergency Communications Training through our Field Day and other activities
Supporting Local Schools with ARISS Crew Contacts and other Amateur Radio activities
To carry out our mission, we have formed close relationships with several schools. This helps us develop and deliver effective, high-quality programs that bring learning through Amateur Radio to young people. You can read more about what we’re doing via the link at the top of the page.
We provide many of these services either free of charge or at a very modest cost. We count on the generosity of our members, friends, and the Amateur Radio community to raise funds to support our work.
We hope that our readers will consider supporting our work at the Nashua Area Radio Society by using Amazon Smile and designating us as your favorite charity and/or by making a donation to our current fundraising campaign (click on the badge below).
On behalf of the many young people and others that we help, thank you very much for your interest and support. We will continue to work hard to provide learning opportunities for young people through Amateur Radio and to continue to make the Amateur Radio Service the best it can be to benefit everyone.
A team of newly licensed members of our club, the Nashua Area Radio Club, came together to enter the 2016 ARRL Rookie Round SSB Contest, using our club callsign, N1FD. We held a training session at our QTH the weekend before the contest to allow our operators to learn about contesting and to become familiar with our station. We put together a training package to introduce the operator team to contesting in general and to the ARRL Rookie Roundup. You can view the training package here..
Station Setup for the Contest
We entered the ARRL Rookie Roundup in the Multi-Op, Single Transmitter category using the club’s N1FD call sign. This gave everyone a chance to operate in the contest and contribute to the team’s final score. Fred, AB1OC spent some time setting up and checking out our station ahead of time. Our operators used the N1MM+ logger and operated using 100w of power on the 20m and 40m bands.
We had a total of 13 Nashua Area Radio Club members who attended the preparation session and/or operated in the contest. Folks worked as teams during the contest with one person operating while another person logged. Our operators had nice pileups to work for a good portion of the contest. All of our Operators did really well.
As you can see from the video above, we definitely have some future contest stars in our club!
The table above shows the results of our operations during the 6-hour contest period. Our team did really well! Of particular note is that they were able to work 45 of the 70 available multipliers. It will take some time for the ARRL to put together the results for everyone in the contest but we believe that our team did very well.
Abby and her Dad Jamey Operating in the ARRL Rookie Roundup SSB
The results are in and N1FD took first place in the recent ARRL Rookie Roundup SSB in the Multi-op Category. The N1FD team was also #1 in area one and #5 overall in the contest. Congratulations to all of our operators – they did a great job operating in the contest. You can find all of the scores for the contest here.
Do you have a contest station? If so, we’d like to encourage you to host and Elmer some new hams and challenge us in the ARRL Rookie Roundup RTTY on August 21.
There is much being said and written these days about the importance of bringing new people, especially young people, into our Hobby. There are many obvious reasons for this. As we all get older or get busy with other aspects of our lives, some will leave the hobby. Also, we have the use of many commercially valuable portions of the RF spectrum and there is always pressure to reallocate bands or segments of bands that are not fully utilized. In my mind, the most important reason to bring new HAMs into our hobby has to do with the energy and new ideas that these folks bring to Amateur Radio. Amateur Radio has always been a learning hobby and new folks help us to keep this important part of what makes our hobby so fun and vibrant.
Anita (AB1QB) and I try to put a lot of time and energy into getting folks started in Amateur Radio and helping them to build their skills and progress. Our Amateur Radio License Classes and the youth outreach work that we’ve been doing are two good examples of this. To make these efforts as successful as they can be, it’s also very important to provide good opportunities for folks who are new to various aspects of Amateur Radio to learn and gain experience. This means becoming an “Elmer” or a HAM Radio mentor to people who are less experienced in some part of the hobby than you are.
Perhaps the most challenging part of Amateur Radio for many new HAMs is making the transition from getting their initial license or a license upgrade, to getting on the air with their new privileges. I think that this is equally true for newly licensed folks and for folks who have upgraded to a higher license class and are looking to get onto the HF bands. It’s impossible to teach everything that one needs to get the most from their Amateur License in classes alone.
Help A Young Person Learn To Operate From Your Shack
So what does effective Mentoring look like? I think that the answer is different for every HAM. For a new Tech, it may be as simple as helping the person to pick their first radio and antenna along with some help getting it programmed for the local repeaters. For a person upgrading their license to gain HF privileges, it is often about helping to get a first HF antenna up along with helping them to select equipment for and assemble a first HF station. All of these folks will also benefit from help getting on the air and learning to operate. Most of all, a great m is someone who is willing to give their time to help a person who is new to an aspect of Amateur Radio learn and get started doing what they want to do.
I have personally found being a Mentor to be one of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of Amateur Radio. Every time that I help someone get on the air for the first time or help someone to build their first HF antenna or station, I get the same enjoyment as when I did these things for the first time in my Amateur Radio experience.
Mentoring is also a great opportunity for a “Mentor” to learn new things. Newer or less experienced folks will have different things that they want to try or learn about than those things that we “Mentors” consider our “tried and true” Amateur Radio activities. A great Mentor will help the less experienced HAM take on these projects and learn along with them. This gives the less experienced person the confidence and support that they need to try more difficult projects with confidence. The learning experience associated with being an Elmer has often been the best part of the experience for me.
So how does one get started with Mentoring? You could open your station to newer HAMs and offer them a chance to get on the air and learn to operate. There is always someone looking to put up a new antenna or repair an existing one. These are all great opportunities for Mentoring. Also, you could consider creating a presentation that you can deliver at your local radio club meetings as a way to share specialized knowledge or experience that you may have. If you are newly licensed, perhaps you could help someone who is studying for their license exam with some of the areas that they are finding difficult. Also, new folks tend to have experience with computers and the Internet which many of the folks who have been in the hobby for a while can benefit from. This can be a 2-way Mentoring opportunity.
I hope that all of our readers will consider becoming a Mentor in some way. Your efforts to help someone new or less experienced can provide you with the satisfaction that you helped to make Amateur Radio a better hobby for everyone.
