On 20/01/2016 01:15, Fred Roberts wrote:
On 19/01/2016 18:44, gareth wrote:
With the apparent interest that youngsters have in Enigma Machines,
and the like, if we could excite them about Morse Code, then, if
attracted to amateur radio, they could realise a complete station for
an outlay of under £100, and build it themselves and get the _REAL_
radio amateur kick!

Have taken part in a number of highly successful high profile special
event stations the one thing that excited visitors both old and new was
CW. Nothing else came close, we had hordes of kids lining up to have
their name transmitted in morse and to play with oscillators. When
running pileups with qso's being displayed in real time on a computer
display adults were amazed at:

1. The distances involved
2. The speed of contacts
3. The bouncing around between countries/continents

Digimodes bore the public and someone talking on sideband/FM/DV/repeater
is just a **** talking sh!te into a microphone.

CW is the mode par excellence for attracting new comers.

Ditto.
When kids carry in their pockets the ability to speak across the planet
as well as text chat and send images they have little interest in speech
or digital. When I was a lad the prospect of talking transatlantic was
the stuff of sci fi. Today kids will carry on a conversation with people
across the globe while in-game chatting on the xbox.

What I find grabs their attention is hand winding a toilet roll tube
inductor then connecting it up to a long wire, a galena crystal and a
crystal earpiece and with drawing pins and fibreboard and listening to a
local radio station.
From there it is onto making a pixie or similar and playing with morse.
Unfortunately that is the point that the interest wanes for most of them.

Andy