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[HCDX] Shortwave radio is finding a receptive young audience
Shortwave radio is finding a receptive young audience
Calabasas teenagers accustomed to cellphones, texts and Tweets have
become ham hobbyists.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2009/07/web_radio_royalties
_resolved_1.html?hpid=news-col-blog
By Bob Pool
July 25, 2009
Other kids are consumed with cellphones, text messages and Tweets, e-
mails and Facebook postings.
But 75 teenagers in Calabasas have become licensed amateur radio
operators and hope to lead a new wave of shortwave enthusiasts.
For them, the image of the gray-haired ham radio hobbyist tinkering with
capacitors, carrier frequencies and coaxial antenna cables is as old-
fashioned as the dots and dashes of Morse code.
"I always thought that cellphones were the most reliable form of
communication," said 16-year-old Trenton Gluck. "Everyone uses
cellphones."
But one day four years ago, Gluck realized that pocket phones don't work
when there's a power failure. Neither does the Internet. But battery-powered
ham radios and solar-powered hilltop repeater stations do.
So the Calabasas youngster was all ears when science teacher Karl Beutel
offered to teach A.C. Stelle Middle School eighth-graders basic radio
principles and give them extra credit if they could pass the Federal
Communication Commission's amateur radio license test.
Gluck was among 17 students to pass the FCC test that year.
Over the next three years, 57 others earned their licenses. There are plans
to offer the two-day radio sequence again this coming school year.
Beutel, 33, of Agoura Hills, said he was motivated by the 1994 Northridge
earthquake to become a licensed amateur radio operator.
He said he decided to work radio into his students' classroom instruction
after fellow ham Norm Goodkin bemoaned the state's dropping references
to electromagnetism from its eighth-grade physical sciences curriculum.
"We didn't go through any hoops. We just did it," Goodkin said of the
curriculum upgrade. Goodkin, 65, is a computer project manager who lives
in Calabasas and has been a ham radio hobbyist for 52 years. His wife,
Naomi, jokes that she had to become a licensed amateur operator before
Goodkin would marry her.
Other experienced hams say they welcome the youngsters. Mark Spencer, a
Coleville, Calif., educator involved with the hams' American Radio Relay
League, estimated that the average age of this country's 700,000 or so radio
amateurs is about 59. "People who say it's a graying hobby are correct," he
said.
Gluck said he was nervous when he first signed on after getting his license
and his $180 radio.
"I heard all these adults talking and I thought, 'What will I say?' I've only told
one person my age over the radio. But they can hear your voice and know
you're young," he said.
Another Calabasas High senior, Eliana Levenson, 17, said she attempted
last year to start a radio club at Calabasas High for alumni of Beutel's
classes but was unable to find a teacher to sponsor it.
Many of the Calabasas teenagers say they had hoped to become active with
an emergency communications network that serves their community and
neighboring Topanga Canyon and Agoura Hills during brush fires or other
disasters. But they have to be 18 to take part.
Levenson, Gluck and another senior, Miles Keijer, 17, of Bell Canyon, said
they will try again this fall to launch a high school club that will serve as a
follow-up to Beutel's middle school class and keep teens active on the air.
Keijer said they're hopeful the radio club idea gets a better reception this
time around. He said he knows how to spread word of it to his classmates.
"I have a Twitter account. I text. I e-mail; I have nine e-mail accounts. I'm on
MySpace and Facebook," Keijer said. "Everybody's on Facebook."
Please read and distribute this 15 year research article
http://tinyurl.com/5vzg7e
Please read my article on SINPO at http://tinyurl.com/yt7qjd
________________________
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/06600224598981072865
http://zliangas.blogspot.com (radio tech , gadgets, grk ethics)
http://zlgr.stumbleupon.com (my social 'bookmarks' )
http://zlgr.multiply.com (radio monitoring site plus audio clips ) MAIN SITE
http://www.youtube.com/zach0gr some videos
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/302315/ (Litohoro) 321199/Tinos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachgr pictures upload
http://www.geocities.com/zliangas
http://www.myspace.com/310100806
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=770974854
http://del.icio.us/gr_geek1
........
Zacharias Liangas , Thessaloniki Greece
greekdx @ otenet dot gr ---
Pesawat penerima: ICOM R75 , Lowe HF150 , Degen 1102,1103,108,
Tecsun PL200/550, Chibo c300/c979, Yupi 7000
Antenna: 16m hor, 2x16 m V invert, 1m australian loop
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