And there is no better way to help a child learn than to get them
interested in the subject. Geography? Time zones? Math, science,
technology? An interest in ham radio helps with all of those.

They'd need HF privs for some of that. HF propagation is needed to get
your signal to Pottsylvania...




Her folks shepherded her into ham radio beacause ham radio is a great
way for kids to learn geography??

I don't know what they do in K-12 grades now, but way back when I was a kid,
geography was taught in grades 4 thru 7. "What's the capital of South
Dakota?"
"Where is Red China?" "What voltage do they apply to the electrified
barbed wire
surrounding the Communist Bloc?" ;-) We learned about evil Godless
communism
in geography class....







Nothing unusual about that. A huge percentage of all of us kid hams
didn't have any particular "parental support" when we became hams. All
my folks cared about was that whatever it was that I was doing with a
soldering iron in the cellar didn't result in the Henny Carr the town
cop dragging me home by the scruff of my neck *again* for commiting
some bush-league juvenile atrocity or another. Worked for them and it
worked for me.


They didn't get paranoid about your messing with dangerous electricity?
:-) My parents
knew about electricity and had no real fear of it, but my grandmother
had no clue at
all about electricity. She grew up somewhere near Scranton PA before
they had
electricity there....



She got 4 wrong on Element 4. How many did you get wrong on yours?

3. Well, 2 on 4A and 1 on 4B.








Tell ya what, Larry, I'll fill a box with parts and you can come over
and build afunctioning ham rig out of them. No instructions, no
elmers, just parts and a book or two.
I did it when I was 13. I doubt
you could do it, Larry.



Virtually all yer kid ham predecessors could cobble rigs together
"Back in my day". It was almost the norm then. A lot higher
percentage of us designed and rolled our own than was the case "in
your day" a decade and a half later. By the time Larry got into ham
radio hombrewing no longer made any sense except in oddball cases so I
doubt he had any reason to even consider building his own rig. Entry
level rigs have been products of the era in which we came into the
service. YMMV and it obviously has.

Many novice setups were built out of junked tube TV parts and modified
AM radio
receivers. QST published many articles about such. The designs were
such that you
could have something that worked without causing a lot of TVI. Designs
that were
not fussy about adjustments and component selection. Which is what you
want in
manufacturing, something that can be thrown together and always work.