Kids Day 6-18-2016

Our youngest son, Nathan had his birthday fall on the same day as the ARRL Kids Day event this year. We had about 10 of his friends over to the QTH to celebrate his birthday. Since I had my HF radio in a tote from the weekend before when I brought it with me on a getaway trip to Amish Countrty in North East Ohio with the XYL, I decided to turn the garage into a ham shack, especially since the activities for the birthday party included a slip n slide and a water fight.

The party started at 1pm, by 2 pm the kids were outside getting wet, and at around 2:30 we did the cake and presents. At 3pm I got a couple party goers that wanted to talk on the radio out to the shack. We were able to make contact with a station in Texas who had 3 kids at his location. After a short QSO with the first party goer the band went away when the 2nd party goer tried to have a QSO with one of the other kids in Texas.

The bands weren’t in that great of shape so we switched over to the N8IG repeater where a couple more party goers had a nice QSO with Bob, N8GU and Jackson had a nice QSO with John, KA8LVZ.
Overall I would say Kids Day could have been better if the bands were in better shape. I would call it successful despite the band conditions since a couple of kids were able to make contacts in Texas. The few kids that wanted to talk on the radio got to and since all but one weren’t familiar with Amateur Radio, I would call it a success.