On Wednesday, 16th of January, the first class of the spring session commences; this will complete our sixth year of amateur radio at Central Middle.

Our instructional team has been Kathie, VA7KTH, who is also a family counselor at Central; Nick, VA7NAF and me, VE7TBC. We’re a little distressed that we won’t have Nick, who did the majority of the VHF radio guidance, this spring, as Nick is on job employment.

Nevertheless, Kathie and I are excited that we will have 16 students, all of whom chose our amateur radio course as their No. 1 preference out of a couple of dozen possible enrichment classes. Up until now, we’ve tried to limit our student number to 10, in order to give individualized attention; however, Kathie tells me that the returning students insisted that they wanted to continue; and the new students are equally adamant.

This past fall, we studied basic electronics, including circuits, batteries, resistors, capacitors etc. Dr, Ron Verrall, VE7RIV, gave an explosive demonstration of the characteristics of resistors, and capacitors – several of them with student-pleasing sparks.

We also made contact with several stations along the Island Trunk System, on the lower mainland and in Washington State on the vhf bands. And we had great fun doing Morse code. The students have been really enthusiastic about CW this year. They view it as a game, and compete against each other to be the first to figure out the word. One game they play is that one of them keys the word; the first student to figure out the word gains control of the key. They are learning at a speed of approx. 15 wpm.

This session we will be operating HF, using our newly donated radio from the estate of Steve Chisholm, VE7KZ. The first band and frequency we intend to transmit on is 3.729, the “Public Service Band”. You might listen for us somewhere after 11:20 and Wednesday mornings until March 5th.

For more information contact me, ve7tbc@telus.net. We also plan to be on VHF beginning with the WARA frequencies 146.840, or 146.550 ( both with 100 Hz tone, negative offset).

We only had one young lady in our class this past semester; but she was a hot-shot! Elaina is home-schooled and only comes to Central Middle School for our enrichment program. Her young friends, many of whom are in Central Middle School kept asking her: Why are you ‘taking ham radio’? She tried to tell them, but it just didn’t seem to compute in their minds.  

Well, she had an opportunity to show them – each Christmas, the school holds a full assembly before recessing for the holiday season. We were asked to give a three-minute demonstration. I chose Elaina to be our star – she used a key to transmit “We wish you a happy, safe holiday”. Four of the other students copied her CW, and after she had sent it, I asked one to tell us what she had sent. He got it right, which means that her sending was excellent!  

Later, I heard, her friends told her she was ‘awesome’! We’d like to get more girls in the program; and just before the Christmas assembly, I met one who was getting some counseling from Kathie, VA7KTH. I’ve asked Kathie if she’d consider joining us.  Perhaps it’s indicative of our not having many young women that we target the ‘kids at risk’. There probably are more boys.