[MRCA] The Joys of Grandfatherhood

[Paul Beckwith]

Hey Rich,

Good post!!  Our son, daughter-in-law and seven year old grandson are 
coming from Missouri to visit us next week.  My son wanted a ham license, 
but was too lazy to study.  The grandson is coming of age and may be 
another story.  Think I'll put a SW RX on the table by his bed and give him 
a pep talk.  Maybe it'll motivate our son, as well.

I've been in Ft. Meade....Quite an experience!!

73's de Paul K2LMQ....Kingman AZ

At 12:51 PM 2/20/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>I just experienced an epiphany! Two of my grandkids (the ones who live at 
>Fortress Meade....you know, home of the National Security Agency; "In God 
>We Trust, Everyone Else We Monitor!") have been here for the long weekend. 
>Kielan, 12 and her brother K.C., 5, are both somewhat intrigued by 
>Pop-Pop's radio gear...green radios, black radios, kit radios, Ten-Tec 
>radios, etc.
>
>About a month ago I bought a book on crystal sets. Kielan started reading 
>it and wanted to know if we could build a simple crystal set? Oh, boy!!! 
>These are the times us Old Pharts live for!!!!! Could we? Oh, yeah, we 
>certainly could!
>
>I poured out the contents of a large Oatmeal box into a plastic container 
>(I have yet to do a study of the effects of dry and wet Oatmeal on the 
>total inductance of an Oatmeal box coil form), grabbed about 100 feet of 
>#22 wire, an old set of Trimm  Dependables (2K Z), a 1N60 diode, a .001 
>disk cap and some Fanstock clips. Double sided foam tape holds the 
>Fanstock clips onto the plastic lid of the Oatmeal container. We wound 40 
>turns of #22 wire onto the Oatmeal box, twisting eyelet "taps" every five 
>turns, secured the ends, mounted the clips to the lid, put the cap and 
>diode into the circuit, all the while Pop-pop was explaining the 
>difference between "series" and "parallel" connections. We then took our 
>creation into the 2nd floor radio room and hooked it up to one side of the 
>40M Extended Double Zepp (EDZ), clipped the ground side of the coil to a 
>mic connector on a nearby rig (don't you always ground your mic plugs?) 
>and low and behold: "Rush Limbaugh" was suddenly coming through the 
>headphones.
>
>Both the kids were amazed (so was I, as it had been a long time since I'd 
>played with crystal sets), my wife, the Beautiful and Talented Patricia, 
>KB3MCT, is also amazed (her husband actually completed a project when he 
>said he would.....AND it worked!), my kids, Kyle, KF4TIV, and Gwen, 
>KB4UNT, are both amazed that ANYTHING I build works....Hey, it was a "win, 
>win, win" situation.
>
>Point: We all need to be training our respective replacements in the radio 
>hobby so give your kids and/or grandkids a chance to experience radio. 
>Whet their appitite with a simple project and then let the magic of radio 
>do the rest. Next mission: (when we encounter decent weather) some model 
>rockets with telemetry payloads, followed by a Basic STAMP controlled 
>robot....Man this could end up costing me money!!
>
>
>Vy 73 to All and thanks for the bandwidth.
>
>Rich K7SZ
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