PLANNING YOUR RADIO MERIT BADGE DAY
Purpose of this Document
This
document provides some suggestions for planning and conducting your own Get
Your Radio Merit Badge Day. It will be
updated as we gain more experience.
Program Basis
The
materials associated with this document are based on the 2001 copyrighted merit
badge pamphlet printed in 2002. The
materials are based on this being done at a club station with a large group of
scouts in one day. However, the same
concepts and most of the material would apply to working with individual scouts
at a home station, or to working with scouts at a camp or other gathering,
either in one day or in several meetings.
Suggestions
·
Start early – It takes
time to plan, get a merit badge counselors approved, find a place, publicize the event, get the scouts
signed up, and get the volunteer Hams on board.
·
Coordinate date with
scout district calendar to prevent conflicts.
·
If you will be using HF
contacts for the scout QSO’s, avoid contest weekends.
·
Get a lot of club
members (and others) involved. We had
20 volunteers, some for half days and some at home to make VHF contacts with
the scouts and we were a few short for our first time when we had 25 scouts.
·
Use care in making
assignments. We initially thought any
Ham would be able to teach any of the mini courses provided they got the mentor
guide and class materials ahead of time.
This was not the case. Some are
just not teachers. Some can’t tune down
their extensive knowledge to a scout level.
And some do not know the background information well enough to
adequately cover the required material.
In the future we would still try to involve every person who
volunteered, but would get a few more good teachers for the classes, even if we
had to recruit them from outside the area.
A note in passing, we had a YL of 14 who did an excellent job teaching a
class.
·
Get the applicable
materials out to each volunteer a few weeks before the event and then go over
it in detail with them on a one-on-one basis so they are prepared and know what
they should be doing.
·
Determine how many merit
badge counselors you will need. We had
two for 25 scouts and we were very (!) rushed to get things completed since
this all occurred at the end of the day.
If possible, consider having the counselor(s) not tied up with
teaching. They could then collect the
blue cards early and get most of the stuff completed on them before the rush as
the end. This would also leave them
some time to supervise and assist with the requirements pass off which follow
each class.
·
Consider the available
space and stations you have when you set a scout limit. Remember the space must also accommodate
your volunteers, the scout leaders, and some parents. We had 25 scouts the first time and found that for the space we
had we should have limited it to 15 scouts.
·
Pre arrange for other
stations to visit with the scouts. A 10
minute QSO is a long QSO which will take a cooperative effort as will working
in Q signals and appropriate procedures.
We were fortunate our first time that propagation was great and lots of
Hams from across the nation responded to our CQ’s and were willing to talk
individually to the scouts for the required 10 minutes.
·
Have the scouts complete
special QSL cards when they complete their contact. Have them self address a stamped envelope for a reply and mail to
the contacted Ham. During the QSO, have
the scout ask if the Ham’s address is current on QRZ so they can send them a
QSL card (and get the current address over the air if not current) and request
the Ham wait until they get the scout’s card before sending a card so it can go
directly to the scout.
·
Plan on having the
scouts there from 8 AM to 5 PM. We
planned 8:30 to 4 and we were rushed to get all the scouts circulated in small
groups through all the classes, the one-on-one passing off of requirements, and
the review/confirmation/signing of each scout’s merit badge blue card.
·
Even if you use VHF for
the scout contacts, have an HF station running throughout the event so the
scouts get a feel for the fun of Ham radio.
Demonstrate CW. Map the contacts. We ran both an HF station and a VHF
station. The HF contacts generated a
lot more enthusiasm and interest; the scouts who only got on VHF felt they had
been shorted.
·
Have fun and make the
event enjoyable for the scouts.
·
Have something for the scout
leaders and parents to do so they also get a good introduction to Amateur
Radio.
·
Be ready to offer follow
up efforts such as a licensing class and JOTA participation.
·
Have a follow-up plan in
case some of the scouts are not able to complete the badge requirements during
the day. Of the 25, we had two that had
to leave early and one who just did not understand the material. The merit badge counselor arranged to work
with these later so they could complete the requirements.
Open Your Event to Young Ladies Too
·
We had two young ladies
attend our event. One was a girl scout
and was able to earn a girl scout badge by completing these requirements. The other was a sister to a scout who showed
an interest and she waltzed right through every requirement.
Use of these Materials
Copyright
Notice: This notebook and its contents
is copyrighted (2004) by the Valencia County Amateur Radio Association, PO Box
268, Peralta, NM 87042. Permission is
hereby granted to other non-profit Amateur Radio organizations to copy and use,
and to modify for their own use, this material provided it is done for
non-commercial purposes and is not sold.
When so used, it would be appreciated if its source is mentioned.
Request
If
you do your own Get Your Radio Merit Badge Day, please share your suggestions
and improvements with us. If you make
improvements to our documents, we would appreciate receiving copies. You can find contact information on our
www.qsl.net/KC5OUR web site. Also, we
would appreciate hearing from you if you use this material so we can decide if
it is worth leaving in our web site.