[Kids] Kid's day could be even better.

[dj3ei@famsik.de]

Dear radio amateur and kid's friends,

my daughter, 9 years, is becoming increasingly interested in
amateur radio.  I organized a German "education license"
call, DN3EI, for the two of us, which allows her to be on
the air with that call, as long as I sit right next to her
and supervise.

As about the third thing we did with that call,
we took part in this January's kid's day today.


Given the German time zone, the whole thing started quite
late.  18 UTC translates to seven in the evening our time.
Fortunately, this still being school vacation time, 7 pm
still left us with some 1.5-2 hours to work with, before she
absolutely had to get going to bed.


To tell the sad news first: We were not able to reach one
single (other) kid.

We tried several local repeaters.

Now, we happen to have some problems in our area with
badly-mannered OMs on our 2m repeaters, so I disregarded the
2m recommendation and used our local 70cm repeaters, where
people are usually more friendly.

That part did work out.  Several OMs did answer our calls,
and my daughter talked to them proficiently.  So that was
fun, for everybody involved, and saved the day.  Thanks to
DH1KBH, DD4JL, DL9JI, DD4JN, DJ3KF, and DH1DH!

We also tried shortwave.  I scanned the three recommended
frequency ranges, but could hear noone calling.  20 m seemed
to be "least dead", so I had my daughter call CQ on 14290
kHz, 18:41-18:55.  Nobody answering.  This didn't get
anywhere, so I quickly decied to switch (back) to 70 cm.


I think kid's day is a good idea, and was worth it for both
daughter and daddy.  But I think kid's day could easily be
made even better.  Here are my suggestions to that respect:

- Most importantly: The operating time should be extended.
  18-24 UTC is hard on us in West or central Europe, and
  would be even harder on people further East.  Do people
  make worldwide contacts during kid's day?  In many
  situations, that may not even legal.  If worldwide contact
  isn't such an issue, a sensible change might be "high noon
  to 6 pm your local time zone".

- Also important, and easy to do: This mailing list could
  very well be used to organize skeds a few days (or even
  hours) in advance of the event.  I suggest the text from
  the rules, i.e., from
  http://www.arrl.org/FandES/ead/kd-rules.html
  should suggest such use.

- Recommend an additional frequency range in the 40m or 80m
  band (for European kid's day participants).  (That's not
  all that important, as the rules give us free choice of
  frequency anyway.)

Regards,

Andreas, DJ3EI

[This was my second try - the first didn't come through, as
my subscription came through only after I sent this first
time.]

dj3ei@famsik.de
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