Radio Merit Badge at Camp Lehi

The Radio Merit Badge is earned by approximately 6,500 Boy Scouts in the US each year.  The Radio Merit Badge requirements are demanding and require both classroom learning as well as applied learning in front of a radio.  I really like the design of the merit badge with its hidden Morse code message and lighting bolts.

Radio Merit Badge

I had an opportunity to teach the radio merit badge at a recent Merit Badge Pow Wow at Camp Lehi here in the Bay Area.  My co-instructor for the course was Ray Wentz, W6LPW.

Camp Lehi is a beautiful location in the Santa Cruz mountains

The night before the course the Merit Badge Pow Wow organizer (Jon) and I installed three antennas: a 40 meters home-brew wire dipole, a 20 meters rotatable dipole, and a vhf/uhf antenna.  We setup the radios and class room in the great outdoors under a couple of canopies.  Power was provide a generator.

Rotatable Dipole and VHF/UHF antenna 

Home brew 40 Meters wire dipole between two trees

The 40 Meters wire dipole worked really well for the scouts.  They made contacts with 100W into the North Carolina to the East, Vancouver to the North, San Diego to the South, and Hawaii to the West.  We were using a Kenwood TS-480SAT.  It was a lot of fun to see the scouts make their first radio contacts ever.

Ray tried several times to call on the local repeater using his HT and found no one to talk to.  Fortunately 40 Meters was in good shape and there plenty of hams for the scouts to talk to.

The rotatable dipole was not functioning properly.  I had brought my antenna analyzer and measured SWR exceeding 3.0.  We didn't have time to determine where the failure was occurring in the system.  That will be a job for another day back at the shack.

A big thank you to the patient hams who talked the scouts and helped them log their first contacts.  This event helped create interest in radio.  Several of the scouts mentioned their interest in studying for their own amateur radio licenses.  Support your local scouting organization and radio merit badge, jamboree on the air, and other outstanding programs.

Good DX and 73,
NJ2X