Radio Merit Badge |
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 |
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
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