Yesterday, was another busy day at WA2HOM. Hams who showed up included:

• Dan, KB6NU
• Jim, K8ELR
• Eugene, KD8HSU
• Susan, KD8MZR
• Richard, KD8MZS

Susan and Richard were two of the students in our latest One-Day Tech Class. They’re planning to take a six-month cruise down to the Caribbean soon, and are planning to use ham radio to keep in touch with folks back home.

After answering a bunch of questions about ham radio in general, and trying to figure out how they could use the marine radio that they currently have on their boat on the ham bands, I got Susan to sit down and make a couple of contacts. I wrote out a simple script for her to read to call CQ, and on the second try, she got a reply! So, now, we have another new ham with her first contact under her belt.

We also had quite a bit of visitor activity. We had a group of kids come in, and four different adults signed up to be on our mailing list for the next one-day class.

We were so busy that I wasn’t able to actually get to the “hands-on” activity that I’d planned. Make: Magazine recently posted a new video by Diana Eng, KC2UHB, that shows a very simple way to visualize radio waves. Rather than describe this more fully, you can just watch the video:

Cool, isn’t it? Hopefully, I’ll be able to do this next week.