a field organization of the National Association for Amateur Radio®
Youth activities in the section
The Nashoba Valley ARC garnered some great publicity from its recent Thinking Day on the Air event in Shirley, MA in the Nashoba Valley Voice in a March 2 story entitled, “Now on the air: Girl Scouts“.
See more “Amateur Radio in the Media” stories at https://ema.arrl.org/public-information/amateur-radio-in-the-media/.
The Framingham Amateur Radio Association is offering a scholarship to any area high school senior who will be attending college in the next academic year, or currently enrolled in a college program.
Applicants holding an Amateur Radio license will receive preference. Non-licensed relatives of FARA members will also receive consideration. Membership in FARA is not required.
All applications must be postmarked by April 15, 2018. Please Contact Richard Cosma, AA1VI at rcosma@rcn.com, or call 508-877-8241.
The Clay Center ARC has announced it will conduct three courses for the public, starting in late March and April, 2018.
“We have teamed up with Brookline Adult and Community Education (BA&CE) and Newton Community Education (NCE) to offer a radio Technician Class course for adults and child-parent pairs to facilitate their successful completion of the FCC radio license test. Children who pass the test receive a free membership in the Clay Center Amateur Radio Club, the largest youth-oriented radio club in New England.”
Clay Center will also hold Technician and General Class “License In A Weekend” events.
For full details, visit http://www.cc-arc.org/courses/.
The Clay Center ARC will feature guest speaker Russel Nickerson of Collabots on February 6, 2018 at 6:30 PM.
“Robotics is a combination of technology that changes life as we know it. Transistors increased the adoption of radios in the past; now there are other technologies that are making robotics a reality.”
The Clay Center is located at the Dexter School at 20 Newton Street, Brookline, Massachusetts.
via Clay Center ARC e-newsletter
The Red Sox 2017 STEM Day at Fenway Park in Boston, MA drew over 2,500 students from schools in every New England state, including schools in low-income areas. Some students traveled a day early to ensure they’d be there on time. The Red Sox had been sending various STEM education materials to all schools.
A tweet from the Italian Space Agency / ISS crew member and amateur radio operator Paolo Nespoli, IZ0JPA: “One astronaut and 2000 future ones! Had fun talking with you all!” Fenway Park also tweeted, resulting in 26.5K tweets, 305 following, and 514 followers. Dan Barstow from CASIS was at Fenway and moderated the ARISS radio contact.
[See also: “Boston Red Sox Promote STEM Education By Hosting STEM Days At Fenway Park“]
Bob Phinney, K5TEC writes in the Clay Center ARC mailing list:
Six student projects were chosen by NASA to fly in a rocket or high-altitude balloon this summer. As part of the activities offered by the Clay Center Amateur Radio Club (CC-ARC) at Dexter Southfield School, students designed projects for the NASA “Cubes in SpaceTM” program, the only program in the world to provide students (ages 11-18) with a free opportunity to design experiments to be launched into space on a NASA rocket or balloon.
Lead members include Julie KC1GMW, Morgan KC1GRZ, Nathan KB1RD, Hardy KC1ESU, Raif KC1GRX, Jason KC1GBV, Conrad KC1GBW, Rishi KC1BKX, and Sean K3FAY. Thanks to adult supervisors Christy KC1GAF, Bruce N9JBT, John AB1ZV, Ted KB1NTJ, Marlene Schwarz, and Dan Sage.
SKYWARN training teaches you how to spot and report severe weather conditions for the National Weather Service. Training will be provided on Tuesday evening, April 25, at the Clay Center by lead trainer Rob Macedo, KD1CY. All adults welcome, as well as youth who are scouts or ham radio operators. Space is limited. You must plan to stay from 6:30-9:00 to be certified. Register with bphinney@dextersouthfield.org.
Benjamin Lee, K7JS writes on BARC-list:
On April 29th from 9 am to 5 pm, the Harvard Wireless Club will be hosting the Harvard Amateur Radio Symposium on campus. We will have a variety of interesting speakers from around the world on topics ranging from the technical to the historical to the social. All are welcome at this exciting meeting! The event is free but a donation is humbly requested in order to help us put this event on for the public.
RSVP is required here http://tiny.cc/hwc2017.
I’ve attached the flyer and hope to see as many of you there as possible!
73,
Benjamin Lee, K7JS
Harvard Wireless Club, W1AF
PS: If you’re still not convinced, there’ll be an ice cream break generously donated by JP Licks!
Members of the Framingham Amateur Radio Association were on hand last week at the club station to demonstrate Amateur Radio to a local cub scout troop.
According to Jeff Piazza, Cub Master of the Wellesley Cub Scout Troop, the evening was a great success for all the participants.
“Thank you for a great evening for the boys. As you can appreciate, keeping a group of boys this age engaged and not bouncing off the walls can be a significant challenge, but this was not an issue with last night’s event. Clearly you were doing something right!”
“I want to thank Ed, W1NXC, Mary, KA1HGL, Sumner, W1VIV, and especially Jim, W1EQW who operated from his QTH on the FARA repeater for over an hour to give the scouts the thrill of talking with someone on the air,” added Framingham ARA President Gordy Bello, K1GB.
Additional photos from the cub scout event at W1FY are available for viewing.
“Pi” Pugh, K1RV writes on K1USN RC list:
The 2011 International Museum Ships Weekend was a resounding success!
We had quite a group of operators, helpers and visitors last weekend and we were able to make close to 1000 contacts with 46 states, 31 DXCC countries and 24 participating Museum Ships! The K1USN QSL requests are already pouring in! We hope to have our new cards printed ASAP.
We arrived at 7 PM Friday evening to get the HF stations ready to go. We ran the Yaesu FT-920 and 500 watt Ameritron Amplifier on 20 meters into the Sommer yagi. It performed flawlessly.
We decided to use the Kenwood TS-690-S into the G5RV antenna as our second station and concentrated on 40 meters.
We had over 250 contacts before shutting down for the night at 11:30PM.
Many of the K1USN crew went to Jamies in Braintree at 7 AM for breakfast before heading over to operate. Saturday morning we had both stations operational throughout the day and continued to rack up contacts. Although we did some operating on 17, 15 and 6 meters we pretty much stuck to the “bread n’ butter” bands of 20 and 40 meters.
Special thanks goes to Warren, WA1YKF, for doing a fine job preparing the ends of our hardline cable run to give us the option of using the R-5 vertical which is mounted on the phone pole at the lower end of the parking lot. This enabled us to add a third HF station using the IC-746-PRO and R-5. As an added bonus we found that six meters was open on Saturday and the R-5 loaded quite well on that band, too.
BTW, we were able to work a number of old friends including several who spent many hours operating with us during previous MSW events onboard the USS Salem. Bruce, K1HTN and Norm, WA1DBR as well as former USS Salem crew member, Radar, N2GDY.
We were unable to get our vintage station operational this year, but we already have plans for some station improvements by W1EKG and KB1IIU. BTW, Bill has offered to supply a watertight box for completing the hardline installation.
We had a total of 976 contacts with 262 on CW and the rest on SSB.
We worked 46 states missing only Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Here is a list of the 31 DXCC countries worked: K United States VE Canada EA8 Canary Islands KP2 US Virgin Islands KP4 Puerto Rico TI Costa Rica HA Hungary DL Germany OE Austria V3 Belize UR Ukraine UA European Russia SP Poland I Italy EA6 Balearic Islands YO Roumania ZA Albania PA Netherlands ON Belgium V4 St Kitts YU Yugoslavia S5 Serbia UL Kazakhstan F France LX Luxembourg G England CU Portugal HP Panama EA Spain LZ Bulgaria SM Sweden
Here is a partial list of those who particIpated with us during MSW 2011. My apologies for any omissions.
K1RV, K1WN, W1JT, W1ICU, KB1PVC, W1AY, W1BT, N1VTI, WA1YKF, KA1KIJ, KB1TEE, KB1SVY ( and XYL, Michelle), N1DC, KB1UBX, KB1VGN, KB1REQ, NI1X, W1EKG, KB1IIU, WA1TPC, K1WCC, N1CVI, KC1JET.
Here is a list of the 24 participating ships we worked this year:
Please QSL each ship directly
USS Lexington Aircraft Carrier Corpus Christi, TX W5LEX
USS Yorktown Aircraft Carrier Charleston , SC WA4USN
USS New Jersey Battleship Camden, New Jersey NJ2BB
USS Massachusetts Battleship Fall River, MA N1EPL
SS Willis B Boyer Bulk Carrier Toledo, OH W8WBB
HMS Belfast Cruiser London, UK GB2RN
USS Littlerock Cruiser Buffalo, New York W2PE
USS Turner Joy Destroyer Bremerton, WA NS7DD
USS Slater Destroyer Escort Albany, NY WW2DEM
USCGC Mackinaw Icebreaker Mackinaw, MI W8AGB
*LS Nantucket Lightship East Boston, MA W1NLS
*LS Overfalls (LV 118) Lightship Lewes, DE KB3MIP
*Carl D Bradley Limestone Carrier Rogers City, MI W8CDB
USS LST-325 LST Evansville, IN WW2LST
MS Atlantis Minesweeper Dresden, Germany DK0MHD
SS Keewatin Passenger Steamship Saugatuck, MI K8CJQ
U-5075 Seehund Submarine Quincy, MA. WW2MAN S637 Espadon Submarine Saint-Nazaire France F6KBG
U-995 Submarine Laboe Germany DL0DMB
USS Batfish Submarine Muskogee, OK WW2SUB HMCS Onondaga Submarine Rimouski, Quebec VA2GNQ
SS American Victory Victory Ship Tampa, Florida W4AVM
*SS Lane Victory Sat Only 1600 to 2200Z Victory Ship Los Angeles, CA W6LV
Naval Tech’l Museum La SPEZIA A.R.M.I. Italy II1ICS
One final word to mention the VE exams this Saturday at K1USN! Please contact Bill, K1WN (k1wn@aol.com) if you want to take an exam.
73,
Pi – K1RV
Elementary school teacher Ms. Donna LaRoche, KB1LWY is introducing Amateur Radio to another class of eager first-grade HAMsters at the Winn Brook Elementary School in Belmont.
“In addition to all of our exciting ham radio learning adventures and QSOs that we make from our classroom shack, and all of the fabulous guests who come and share their ham radio expertise/passion with the HAMsters, Dr. Chuck Counselman and I are going to teach CW to the HAMsters this year, too,” writes LaRoche. “I’ll be learning it right along with the 6 and 7 year olds in our class!” she adds.
The HAMsters have received visits from Dr. Chuck Counselman, W1HIS, and Mr. Bill McIninch, KA1MOM, who came just before the holidays.
“[KA1MOM] was dressed in red with black boots and his fluffy white beard and the kids thought he was no other than Santa!” says KB1LWY.
Dr. Martin Bayes, AA1ON, is one of the class’s special friends who sends the children post cards from the “four corners” of the world. LaRoche hopes that Bayes will be back to visit the HAMsters “in between his frequent visits to Hong Kong.”
ARRL Headquarters surprised the HAMsters with a recent gift of a 2007 Handbook. To thank the staff, the children created and sent a home-made “thank you” note.
The Winn Brook program is officially a part of the League’s Amateur Radio Education and Technology Program; a.k.a. “The Big Project.”
Shown here: a past visit by Mr. Phil Temples, K9HI and Dr. Ariel Cohen, K9ERA.
Zane Wruble, W2YL is prominently featured in “Up Front in QST” on page 21 in the January, 2008 QST. The photo shows the Harvard freshman and QST co-author sitting at the operating position of the Harvard Wireless Club, W1AF. W2YL is the daughter of Brian Wruble, W3BW. She currently serves as the Wireless Club’s president.
The Clay Center in Brookline will hold weather festival events in collaboration with the Blue Hill Weather Observatory and the National Weather Service on Saturday, October 27, 2007. Many activities have been planned for families and children. Admission is free, although some activities require purchase of tickets or kits.
Activities planned include: demonstrations, planetarium shows, lightning shows, kite-building, rocket launches, hands-on educational activities, educational displays and handouts for all ages. Ride a Segway! Make Instant Snow! Talk on Amateur Radio!
For additional information, see Weather Festival Public Event.
[See also: Southern New England Weather Conference]
Two youths with Eastern Massachusetts connections are mentioned in the latest issue of Youth@HamRadio.Fun, an on-line forum for young amateurs on the ARRLWeb. The forum is moderated by contributing editor Andrea Hartlage, KG4IUM.
Rebecca Rich, KB0VVT, of Raytown, Missouri, is currently a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She’s shown here in a 2005 photo. Rich was the winner of the 2004 ARRL Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Award.
Bryce Salmi, KB1LQC is also mentioned in Youth@HamRadio.Fun. An Amateur Extra class operator, Salmi is currently a senior at Chelmsford High School. He was instrumental in helping establish the Chelmsford High School Amateur Radio Club (KB1NAY). [See also: Chelmsford HS ARC Kicks Off School Year With Outdoor Demo”.]
Photo courtesy ARRL.
Members of the K1USN Radio Club plan to operate W1BSA during the upcoming Jamboree On The Air on Oct. 21, according to Harold “Pi” Pugh, K1RV.
“This should be a good opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities as well as introducing people to the Thomas Watson Library and Research Center,” writes Pi. “We have made a lot of progress getting K1USN back on the air and want everyone to see how it looks.”
[See also: USS Salem RC Has A New Home At Watson Library]
Bryce Salmi, KB1LQC writes on the New England QRP Club web site:
“The Chelmsford High School Amateur Radio Club had its early kickoff today. We set up under an outdoor gazebo two stations. Both running Yaesu FT-897D’s (One the schools and one ours) connected to computers and running ham radio deluxe for logging. One radio was connected to the dipole the other to the 6M beam and 2M vertical. We started around 12 PM and really started operating at about 1, after lunch which was a cookout…yes it was raining out but you can’t extinguish that desire to operate! We made a few contacts on 20M voice and 6M voice, however both bands were dead…
We ended up building a 2M J-pole antenna for use at the high school this year for monitoring the ISS SSTV (Yeah its good enough for the ISS SSTV, though not circularly polarized). Many of the members got to help out and cut the copper pipe and solder it together. In the picture it is on a bench right in the center… its hard to see but its there! We came back operated a little and then played some CHSARC Football with my little brother HIHI, we were soaked by the end of it, but it was so fun!
Then we jumped back on the radio and started PSK31 on 40M. That was when we made a few more contacts, actually most of out contacts! We got Matt, one of the unlicensed members very interested in PSK and talked to someone using Flex Radio which was right up his ally since Matt is very good with computers. Gillian talked to Belgium and a few of us talked around the US. [more]
The Winn Brook school HAMsters of Belmont received two special visitors on June 2–Phil Temples, K9HI and Dr. Ariel Cohen, K9ERA. The first-graders, taught by Donna LaRoche, KB1LWY, were treated to stories by Temples and Cohen about their ham radio experiences and their respective careers. Cohen spoke of her first contact by Morse code with another woman in Alaska, and her public service work during a hurricane in North Carolina. Temples described how Amateur Radio can be used by people with disabilities to communicate with others even when they may be unable to see, hear or speak. The children, in turn, treated the husband-and-wife team to a “Collection Day” show-and-tell of special objects and memorabilia.
This marks the third year the Watertown couple have visited Donna La Roche’s first grade class. Other recent ham visitors have included Dr. Chuck Counselman, W1HIS, and Bill McIninch, KA1MOM. The class is affiliated with the ARRL’s Education and Technology Program, a.k.a. “The Big Project.”
—photos courtesy KB1LWY
I am here to tell you that the CHSARC (KB1NAY) will be operating in the ARRL School Club Round-up! Our schedule is:
Monday 2/13/06 – 2:00-3:30 pm
Tuesday 2/14/06 – 2:00-3:00 pm
Wenesday 2/15/06 – 2:00-3:00 pm
thurday 2/16/06 – 2:00-3:00 pm
Friday 2/17/06 – 2:00-3:30 pm
We are mainly on 20M SSB around 14.249 MHz + or – but look for us elseware if you cannot find us since we may be elsewhere. During school at around 10am I will usually get on CW during lunch on 20M and around 11:30 am. Brent (KB1LQD) will as well. All of us will operate under the KB1NAY club call sign. We do have the possibility of moving to 40M but have not done it so far.
We are using a Kenwood TS-440S, 100 Watts into a Hamstick dipole up about 20 feet on a homebrew PVC telescopic mast. For the contest we can only use one radio so we decided to use this rig owned personally by us (KB1LQC, KB1LQD, KB1MGI).
After the first day today (Monday, we made about 39 or 40 contacts, the first contact was with Russia! We have talked to about 15 different states, four countries including Russia, Germany, Croatia, and Canada. We have also talked to four other schools and hope to talk to many more. Mr. Steeves (KB1MKW) did get one of his physics classes on, all of which had never even heard of Amateur Radio and they were very enthused. They made a total of five contacts in their operating time–one of which was DX! All of them were very excited to get on the radio and asked if they could do it tomorrow! I even had a few kids from that class come up to me later in the day expressing how much fun it was to talk on the radio!
Well, we hope to talk to you soon and have many kids talk on the air as well. Thanks for the excuse to get as many kids on the are as we can (especially during school, hi hi!). We hope to get more students involved with amateur radio, and this seems to be one of the ticket for the ride!
Thanks es 73’s
Bryce Salmi
KB1LQC
Co-Founder KB1NAY
KB1LQC@ARRL.NET
Members of the Nashoba Valley Amateur Radio Club helped facilitate a contact between astronauts aboard the International Space Station and youths at the Hawthorne Brook Middle School in Townsend, Massachusetts on November 29.
Shown here: Marilyn Richardson, N1CSH (left) and her twenty student ARISS participants. KD1LE photo
[See also:
Roland Daignault, N1JOY writes on BCRA-club list:
For those of you who did not hear yet, yesterday we had an absolutely perfect radio contact between the [International Space Station] and the Kuss Middle School (Fall River, MA) students. The entire pass was just under 10 minutes long, and the kids were able to ask 22 questions, and we lost signal right at the end of John Phillps’, the astronaut operating NA1SS, 22nd answer.
Ham Radio got plenty of local press too! TV channels 6, 10, & 12 were there, along with Comcast, and FRED TV (Fall River Educational TV), Fall River Heald News, and The Spirit weekly newspaper. The Herald News gave us front page coverage! We also had nice TV spots on channels 6 & 10. (Did anybody see a spot on TV 12 yet?)
We were set up in the Kuss library with about 50 people present, including Mayor Lambert, and Senator Menard who presented a citation to the Kuss students for their work. Frank Bauer, the ARISS coordinator, also flew into town to see our event. We had 12 students lined up with 2 questions each to ask, so almost every kid got 2 chances at the microphone. We also set up an ATV link to the church hall across the street where about 50 more people were watching our live video feed of the event projected onto a large screen.
Needless to say, there were plenty of smiling faces at the end of the event. To show how seriously the Kuss faculty took this event, our contact began at 2:24 PM, and school let out at 2:30, about half way through our ISS pass. You would never had known there was anybody else in the school at 2:30! The school bells did not ring, the kids were asked to be quiet, and were only let out of the exits at the opposite end of the school. Security guards kept the front of the school clear of kids, and the Fall River PD had Rock street closed down! It was definitely an effort in noise control that worked perfectly! No outside noise was heard even though we had most of the library windows open to let some cool air inside.
We used the schools equipment, which consisted of a Yaesu FT-847, Mirage 180 Watt brick amplifier, and an M-Squared 22 element 2 Meter cross Yagi. The antenna is turned by a Yeasu AZ/EL rotor, which we controlled with a laptop running Nova for Windows. There was also a backup station on hand, and luckily not needed. This consisted of an Icom IC-2100H 2 Meter mobile, my RF Concepts 170 Watt brick amplifier, and a Diamond X-500HNA vertical antenna. The school antenna is normally run into Joe Cote’s (KB1LJG) classroom on the 5th floor, but are easily extended to the library 2 floors down by attaching my portable satellite antenna umbilical cord as an extension for the coax cables and rotor control cables, which were conveniently wired with the same style connectors just for this reason.
I want to thank everybody who helped to make this event possible and gave me unconditional support. Of course W2DAN, who has been there every time for the last 2 years. N1RHS & WA1ESO who were there Thursday night until 9:30 PM helping to set up the equipment. Also KB1CNA and WB1HGA who were there to assist on Friday. Also I cannot forget N1DU who donated some very cool commerative patches that were designed by the school, and he was able to embroider on short notice.
(See also: Fall River ARC, Bristol Co. RA Featured in Herald News Story.)
Photos: Left: Senator Joan Menard and Mayor Ed Lambert present Shantae Martins (KB1LKW) a citation recognizing Kuss’s achievments. Right: Kathryn Cooper from Central Park Middle School in Schenectaty, NY, takes a turn asking her question. Next in line is Evan Darmondy, who was interviewed by TV Channel 6. Sitting are (left) Thalita Xavier (KB1MJP) and (right) Jennifer DeLeon (KB1MNK).