K6GBM is the call for Granite Bay Montessori School, a private school serving preschool through 8th grade students. Amateur Radio is an official part of the science curriculum for the 6th through 8th grade students. All students earn a Technician-class license and many choose to go on to earn their General-class license. So far 38 students and one teacher have earned their tickets and 18 have upgraded to General.

We have receivedthree grants from the ARRL. The first was to send the science teacher, Brian Lloyd (WB6RQN), to the ARRL Teacher Training Institute. The second grant was for our basic HF station. Thethird grant was to convert our station to solar power.

The station at K6GBM consists of:

• Elecraft K2 transceiver donated by the ARRL and constructed by the students
• Flex 3000
• Icom IC-2KL 500W amplifier with matching IC-AT500 tuner (donated)
• GAP Titan DX 80M-10M all-band vertical antenna (ARRL)
• Swan 250C 6M xcvr donated to the school and repaired by the students
• Yaesu FT-1802 2M FM xcvr
• Repco Dimension 25W 440MHz repeater with flat-pack duplexer and Pacific Research RI-300e controller (donated)
• Diamond dual-band VHF/UHF antenna for 2M and 70cm (repeater)
• Hamtronics R139 WX satellite receiver and quadrafilar antenna for receiving satellite weather images

Power for most of the station is provided by a 120W solar panel charging a 100AH gel-cell. This provides all the power necessary to run the HF and 2M rigs as well as the 440 repeater. The Swan 250C and 500W amplifier are powered from the mains.

The repeater is on 444.35 MHz with a CTCSS tone of 114.8Hz. The repeater is also on Echolink as K6GBM-R or node number 399102. Feel free to connect and talk to the students.

We have been well supported by the local amateur radio community, including the QWCA and the River City Amateur Radio Communication Society (RCARCS - http://www.n6na.org/). Through their generous donations many of the students have their own stations.

We encourage hams to drop by to meet the kids and share their interest in ham radio and technology. Feel free to contact us via the repeater or at (916) 791-7849 if you would like to visit.