Texas Youth Amateur Radio Club (TYARC)

[Charles L. Cotton]

A close friend and Forum member is an Extra class Ham who lives in close to Galveston. He and I started a ham radio club for youth and we've been working on getting a good location for a repeater installation. We have been successful and our club/kids have been provided a repeater to use for club activities until ours is operational. Our repeater will be accessible via various link systems for people outside the coverage area.

Eric and I held off advertising the new club until we had the infrastructure purchased and a location locked in. We still have some equipment to purchase, including very expensive 7/8" hard line (Heliax), but having use of an interim repeater allowed us to offer our first ham radio class. It has held on Friday, Aug. 18th from 4:00PM until 8:00PM and on Saturday, Aug. 19th from 8:00AM until 5:30PM. This was the first class Eric and I taught, so these folks were our test group.

We had eight kids and three parents attend the class and it went very well. We will do much better at time management for future classes so we can hit our target ending time of 5:00PM on Saturday. We got started about 25 minutes late on Saturday, our hour lunch break turned into an hour and a half and our five minute breaks ran about fifteen minutes. Better time management will allow us to complete the instruction about 4:00PM and then give the exam.

Our original plan was to offer the exam at the end of the class, but that didn't work out. Eric and I are VE's but we didn't have a third person. Plus, we ran late enough that everyone was tired and probably wouldn't have been up for the exam, even though it doesn't take long. It's a good thing we limited the announcement for this first class to kids participating in PSC's Youth Action Pistol League. Now that we have that one under our belt, we'll open up the invitation to a lot more kids and parents. We where very happy to see parents participate and so were their sons and daughters. Our youngest students were one boy and one girl who are nine years old. I was a little worried about their age, but both were really ready for the class and I have no doubt both will easily pass the exam.

The goal for TYARC is to have chapters all over Texas with repeaters linked for formal nets and other events. They will not be permanently linked because that could be a problem for local use. The long term plan is for a second Club repeater to be permanently linked for statewide communication. This will give our kids the option to talk to their local group or on the statewide network. One of the regular weekly nets will focus on the shooting sports so we are likely to see some cross-pollination going on.

Setting this thing up has been a lot of work, but it has been very rewarding. If you have any kids in the Friendswood/Houston area who are interested in taking the Technician Class, or if you are willing to drive to Friendswood, then send me an email and I'll put you on the email list for TYARC announcements. All of the classes Eric and I offer will be free and the only thing parents will have to purchase is the Gordon West study guide and practice software. ($29.92) The package with the software was optional for this first class, but it has proven too valuable not to have people purchase. The cost difference is only $8 and one person in this first class didn't opt for the full package.

On behalf of our kids, parents, Eric and myself, I want to thank PSC for allowing us to use the Club classroom for these classes.

Chas.

[LDB415]

Excellent. Good luck with future classes and the remaining equipment setup. 73 W5DAJ

[cheezit]

Do you have a shareable page for the group on facebook?