Busy Weekend for JSCARC Oct 20-22

JSCARC Members participating in many events this busy weekend..

FRIDAY

Student Intern Tour.
Seven JSC Student Interns came by at 1700 to visit the shack. Jeff AB4ME, Kelvin K5KGH and myself, hosted them. We chatted about ham radio and also conveyed the timely opportunity to quickly get their licenses *now* also they could be candidates for the ARRL $cholarship program which only opens for a few weeks starting next week.  We got them some on-the-air time on 20m SSB.  Made a few QSOs.  A highlight was chatting with a VE4 ham who was in transit, driving an 18 wheeler to Dayton en route for a jet engine delivery.  He’ll then be headed back to his home in the freezing NW Territories in Canada.



SATURDAY

POTA @ GISP.
As John AB5SS mentioned, we had a great POTA outing at Galveston.
K5RG, KG5URA, AB5SS, K5KUA, W5OC played radio under terrific weather with a slight breeze to keep the mosquitos under control ( I saw a few that looked like birds).
Many radios showed up: 2x IC 705, KX2, KX3, FT891 and different antennas. The fishing for QSOs was very good, but the guys next to us who were fishing for Bass and Trout left empty handed.  Maybe they should get ham licenses instead.

Scouts @ W5RRR.
Kelvin K5KGH and I hosted 3 young (~10 years old) scouts and their scout leaders to the shack on Sat @ 1500.  They were troop 2222 from the Woodlands.  The scouts had a great time speaking with a variety of other young and older scouts on-the-air.  Kelvin gave a great introduction to ham radio presentation and then guided them to use the mic.
We concentrated on 20m SSB using the Flex 6400M radio.  At one time, our scouts were speaking to two different Jamboree stations at the same time, which ultimately got pretty confusing but we untangled it. Two of the stations we worked had 50 and over 100 scouts in their “camp”- wow!

Bike Around the Bay (Day 1)
Jeff AB4ME and Mike KA5CVH were also at Galveston providing ham radio communications support for the Bike Around the Bay event
Jeff was stationed near the Bolivar Ferry and Mike support High Island location.

POTA @ Anahuac NWR
David KB5PGY was operating POTA at Anahuac NWR.

Texian Market Days
George AD5CQ was a docent demonstrating Morse Code as it was used in the 1890’s for the Texian Market Days festival 

SUNDAY

Ham Cram Prep
AB4ME and I hosted five of the student interns for a ham cram pre-exam license review session @ the Gilruth from 0900-1145 (thanks Danielle KI5LQT for getting us the room).

VEC Licensing Exam
At 1300, Tanner W9TWJ served as VEC to conduct a special exam session for the students.  It was held in the ham shack with VE support from AB5ME, K5KGH.  Tanner utilized the shack computers as an experiment to administer the exam digitally.  It worked!  Five of the student interns took the tech license- and all passed.  We’ll be welcoming some new hams (Dominic, Vika, Raul, Shantanu, and Michael) into the hobby in the next few days.

Bike Around the Bay (Day 2)  
KA5CVH provided another day of public service support for BAB, with finishing at Bay Area Park.