ARLA/CLUSTER: Jacob Hoschar, com 10 anos, é um dos mais novos radioamadores americanos

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Ten-year-old gets ham radio license

When ten-year-old Jacob Hoschar's school in Forks, Washington State,
shut down due to Coronavirus he and his father Andrew Hoschar studied
for their amateur radio exam and now have the call signs KJ7NZC and
KJ7NXN

The story was reported in the Forks Forum newspaper:

Andrew Hoschar shared the following story …

When the school shut down, they started sending homework packets for
the students to do. I looked at the first packet and knew it would be
a battle keeping him focused and interested in school with only
paperwork.

I spoke with his teacher, and the principal, and received the go-ahead
to use amateur radio as the majority of his curriculum.

We started during spring break, purchased a few books, and joined some
Facebook groups for information and guidance. We call our project “The
father-son journey into ham radio”. I did not have much experience
with it either, so we are learning together from scratch. We have a
LOT of support from one page in particular “Ham Radio Crash Course”,
there are a ton of people there and it’s all positive feedback.

Some of the things we have done so far are:

- Reading the books, and going through the online resources provided
with the books.

- “Field trips” to a good friend of ours that was happy to mentor us
through this process (in ham radio a mentor is called an “Elmer”)

- Watching endless YouTube videos about radios, antennas, frequencies, etc.

- We built 2 antennas from scratch, and are going to be making more,
then figure out why some are better than others.

- A daily journal that my son does on his computer to document his
progress and give to his teachers.

- driving around in the woods to see in real life how radio
propagation works through trees, over mountains, and into valleys.

- I purchased a GMRS radio license to use as well, it covers my wife
Heather, Jacob, and I. It gave us a small taste of what we could do
with an amateur radio license. (The 2 license types are not related).
This was a tool we used to break away from studying and “play” while
being able to put what we learned to the test.

He is the only youngster that I know of involved in amateur radio in
the Forks area currently.

We are not rich by any means, but we get by. Luckily, we live in an
amazing town with wonderful people that love to help others. Two of
the local amateur radio operators gave us a total of seven older
radios, one antenna, and four boxes of old goodies. some of it is
going to be used for education (tearing it apart to look at the guts
and see how it works).

Read the full story at
https://www.forksforum.com/news/ten-year-old-ham

What is Amateur Radio?
http://www.essexham.co.uk/what-is-amateur-radio

Free UK amateur radio online training courses
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2020/april/online-training-for-amateur-radio.htm