[Elecraft] Suggestions for Introducing a 10-year-old to Amateur Radio and Electronics

[Mike Markowski]

Ted,

When my now-21 yr old son was about 14, he had by then earned his 
Technician and learned CW.  At that point he had an iPod and put an 
iambic keyer app on it.  He thought it would be fun to use as a key but 
I pointed out that that would be modulated CW and not actual CW.  Using 
his interest as an opportunity to teach some electronics, here's what we 
did:

1. Bought some equal valued resistors.  Then we could use series and 
parallel to get values needed.  A nice simple lesson there explaining 
why that is.

2. Bought a quad op amp chip.  This is harder to fully teach a kid, of 
course, but we wired up one as an inverting amplifier showing how the 
feedback resistor divided by the input resistor determines the scale factor.

3. We wired up another as a comparator using a potentiometer.

4. Used an NPN as a switch to key the rig.

In the end, ipod (now, smart phone!) audio goes to the amplifier.
Amp out goes to comparator whose output is triggered by cw audio in.
Comparator output goes to NPN switch to key rig.

And then you have the world's most high tech key.  :-)  We topped it off 
by having him solder together the circuit on perf board and mount it in, 
of course, an Altoids tin.  Maybe a mini project along these lines would 
work, tailored to suit his interests and age.

Good luck!
Mike ab3ap



On 10/15/2017 11:46 AM, Dauer, Edward wrote:
> Looking for suggestion about books or kits or whatever else that might interest a ten year old to electronics and to amateur radio.  He is adept at mechanical things and pretty bright.  What else could he be?  He’s my grandson.
> 
> But his understanding of electronics is well insulated by contemporary smart phones and games and the like, about the innards of which one can learn nothing in the old way – the way we did it, by taking the family radio apart and then having to learn how to put it back together.
> 
> Any other grandpas or grandmas out there have experiences to share?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Ted, KN1CBR