The Barnhart Middle School Amateur Radio club (BMSARC) was founded by club trustee, N6DLC, and middle school math teacher, W6OQK, to spark interest in radio communications, electronics, math applications and community service. The first two middle school students to earn their technician licenses, KI6AUG and KI6BDD have been licensed for more than a year. Our newests Hams include KI6CRN and KI6EZW, both 5th graders, and two 7th graders, KI6EZY and KI6EZT. The club is currently meeting twice a week during official school club time and Wednesday mornings and afternoons for students in grades 4-8.

This past summer, BMSARC sponsored a Technician license class. In addition to studying for their licenses, our students worked three T-hunts, had several operating sessions including Field Day and CQ's WW VHF contest, soldered PL-259 connectors, made electro-magnets and calculated and measured voltage, resistance and current in parallel and series circuts.

Contesting has provided several opportunities for our students to operate from the club station. These contest QSOs provide several teaching opportunities including maidenhead grid square locators, latitude and longitude, how to call or answer a CQ, how to make a log entry, radio wave propagation, just to name a few. For the aspiring young HAM, a short, direct contest QSO takes some of the anxiety away from having a “real” QSO. With several students in the radio room and just two operating stations, students rotate through several spots. First, they work the radio to make a QSO. Then, they move to computer to LOG their QSO. Finally, they look up the station on QRZ, print up an address label and fill out a QSL card, set up an SASE… We QSL 100% !!

The BMSARC competed in the annual School Club Roundup (SCR) the second full week of February, 2/13 - 2/17. Special thanks to our Club Trustee, Tim Adams, N6DLC, our Technology Director and Upper School Computer Teacher, for establishing a digital mode for the contest. PSK31 on 20-meters turned out to be our bread-and-butter. We spoke to several school clubs in this mode and several DX countries as well.

My Best Regards:

David Turin – W6OQK Math Teacher & Control Operator N6BMS – Barnhart Middle School ARC