[SMCARA] STEM Festival Summary

[Rob Hoyt]

 A group of hams met at the St. Mary's County fairgrounds this past Saturday, 10/27 to staff a radio booth for the STEM Festival. I would like to thank the following hams for showing up in the rain and supporting the event: 
Jayne, W4VJU
Rick, "antenna guy"
Michelle, N3YRZ
George, KB3YPZ 

And setup next to us with their very nice astronomy display:
Pam, KB3SWS
Jeff, KB3SPH
Charles, AA3WS

 Even though the weather was raining and overcast, we arrived around 0730 and began setting up in Tolerance Hall next to the open area we used last year. We setup the tables and HF radio with the antenna outside, George's HF setup consisted of his mag-mount Ham Stick antennas on 20 and 40 meters and a radio inside running off of a battery. The kids and parents started showing up when the event officially opened at 1000. We had a good time talking with the kids over the 147.390 repeater, doing some Morse code and fox hunting. Due to the limited space available inside the building, we lined up three five gallon buckets upside down against the wall and had the kids hold the HT with attenuator and directional antenna over each bucket and let them guess which bucket hid the fox. This worked out very well! 

 We had a lot of questions from many of the adults about clubs, testing, etc. so we filled them on the local clubs (including SMCARA) and some of the local test sessions. One interesting conversation of the day was when a young lady asked us about taking her test. After handing her a flyer, she went on to tell us her ham dad would not stop bugging her about getting a license; she wanted to get licensed so she could show it to him and then tell him to stop bugging her about it! 

 We all had to admit, our booth seemed a bit bland compared to a lot of the others so we have some good ideas for next year on how we can spice it up and get some more kids to stop by. One good idea is to use some of the "snap" electronics kits and have the kids build some flashing light circuits, FM radio, etc. This topic came up after a nice visit from Steve, KA3WAP and his family to the booth. It seems his Granddaughters like the snap kits and one Granddaughter in particular is quite the expert with them!  

 All in all a very good event and a great way to spend a rainy Saturday! We all look forward to next year's event and working on getting kids involved with electronics and radio.  

73, Rob - N2OMC