Jacob interviews Joe Wright KJ7JWW (Our Elmer). (Submitted photo)
I am not talking about out of date smoked pork here …I am talking about an amazing accomplishment by a Forks 10-year-old who put his mind to something, learned and with co-operation from his parents and the local school he has achieved something people three times his age work hard to accomplish. He recently became a HAM radio operator.
I spoke with his teacher, and the principal, and received the go-ahead to use amateur radio as the majority of his curriculum.
We started during spring break, purchased a few books, and joined some Facebook groups for information and guidance. We call our project “The father-son journey into ham radio.” I did not have much experience with it either, so we are learning together from scratch. We have a LOT of support from one page in particular “Ham Radio Crash Course”, there are a ton of people there and it’s all positive feedback.
Some of the things we have done so far are:
-Reading the books, and going through the online resources provided with the books.
-“Field trips” to a good friend of ours that was happy to mentor us through this process (in ham radio a mentor is called an “Elmer”)
-Watching endless YouTube videos about radios, antennas, frequencies, etc.
-We built 2 antennas from scratch, and are going to be making more, then figure out why some …..READ FULL ARTICLE
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