[Kids] Kids Day Jan 2003

[Ben Worrell - ne5B]

Hi,

I've enjoyed "Kid's day" even when I was the only kid in the shack.  I hate to read about those having a bad or just so so
experience, I'd like to share my expereinces and suggestions for making it better for all the Kids, both young and old alike!

1)  Past and Present Kids days for me
2)  Keeping them interested
3)  Proposal for satisfying Kids day world wide.

1)   Kids Day - Past and Present.
Unfortunately I didn't get to participate in Kids Day like I had hoped, the last weekend of Deer season, had my newphews 6 & 12 out
of pocket, however the 6 year old did bag his first doe, of course his dad helped him just a little ;)

In years past I've participated in Kid's Day twice with my God Daughter, the 1stt time she was 11 2nd time 12yrs old.   The first
time we played at it for about 3 hours total and made well over 25 contacts (25 was our goal and we beat that easily).   The 2nd
time we had less than an hour, and operated mobile/staionary from the driveway at her parents house, and still managed about a dozen
contacts.

>From the 1st efforts she managed to collect about a dozen QSL cards.   That fueled the fire for the 2nd time.
Since them I've moved and doubt we'll get the opportunity to do another kids day together.   Her dad is now a ham, so hopefully
he'll find/make the time to enjoy it with her on one or more local repeaters in Houston.

2)   Keeping them interested and Entertained.
To keep my God Daughter intrested I put her in charge of the VFO / finding someone calling CQ kids day, and she had to make sure we
were within my frequency priveledges (of course I double checked each time).   She used a small World Atlas that I carry with me
when moble that has fairly good details of the States, which she used after most of the contacts to see where she was talking.   She
was just full of Ham related questions and keeping her interested was easy.   Just last year I got an email from her, about doing
the Next kids day, but after a job change / move I'm too far away....

Other ideas to keep them busy besides viewing the map, and tuning around would be memorizing the phonetic alphabet, and having them
spell the spelling words they've recently mastered phonetically.   That and spelling things to each other phonetically was fun,
especailly when I couldn't "read" some of the words, which were almost all spelled correctly!!!
We practiced the Alphabet for a little bit before the 1st Kid's day,  so she was rather comfortable with the alphabet.


3)  Suggestion for Satisfying the World......
I don't think kids day should be extended to more than 6 hours, there wouldn't be enough activity at any given time to make it worth
while.    However havign perhaps 4 different starting times for the world would be a good idea.
Something along the lines of
1800z - 2400z for all of  North and South America,
0600z - 1200z  for Europe and Africa etc.
0000z - 0600 for Asia etc.
Main thing is to start about noon local time for the central part of that quarter of the world

No one time is going to work good for more than one slice of the world at a time.
Those with good antenna systems where DX is a common occurance could participate in more than one slice.


That's my 2 cents worth, for now I'm looking forward to working Kids day in June, hopefully as a Multi operator station!

73 Ben - ne5B