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the Air with Sam Rose, KC2, LRC, and Sterling
Coffee in Zero SSC, recorded live on Thursday,
September 8th, 2016. I'm your host, Neil Rapp,
WB9 VPG. Thanks for tuning into this episode
of HamTalk Live. Tonight we'll be joined by Sam
Rose, KC2, LRC, and Sterling Coffee in Zero SSC.
They were in Austria this summer for the IARU
Region 1 Youngsters on the Air Camp. They'll
share their experiences and their ideas for starting
a similar event right here in the U .S. We'll
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.com and if you missed the show you can download
the podcast from the website and most popular
podcasting websites. Sam Rose KC2LRC is from
Syracuse, New York. Sam was first licensed in
June 2003 at the age of 13. He studied electrical
engineering at Clarkson University where he was
president of Clarkson's radio club K2CC from
2010 through 2012. He now works with C -Speed
in Liverpool, New York doing engineering and
data performance analysis work on the C -Speed
LightWave radar. a next -generation S -band air
traffic surveillance radar. Sam is an avid contester,
works satellites, public service events, IRLP,
restores radios, and enjoys special events like
balloon launches, international space station
retransmissions, and weird contests. Since he
started Ham Radio at a young age, he's particularly
interested in introducing Ham Radio to youth
and young adults. And to this end, he spoke this
past May at the Instructors Forum at the Dayton
Hamvention about the importance of college radio
clubs and was selected to attend Youngsters on
the Air in Austria this past summer. Sterling
Coffee in Zero SSC is from St. Louis, Missouri.
Sterling is currently in avionics and communication
systems. design, test, and integration engineer
in St. Louis. Sterling became a ham at age 16
and is one of the former youth editors at ARRL
and has his own YouTube channel about ham radio.
He is a 2014 graduate of Missouri University
of Science and Technology where he was president
of the WZero Triple E Amateur Radio Club. His
degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis
in electromagnetics is from there. He does a
lot of listening, contesting, and remote operating
from the W zero triple E shack as well as his
parents' shack. And he was also selected to represent
the United States at youngsters on the air in
Austria this past summer, which is what we're
talking about this evening. So Sam Sterling,
welcome to ham talk live. Hey, happy, happy to
be here. Evening Neil. Thanks for having us tonight.
Well, I met Sam. a few years ago over at the
Hamvention with one of my former students and
we've kind of kept in touch over the years and
he's had a lot of great ideas especially for
college radio clubs and so he was selected to
go over here and then Sterling's been around
doing the youth editing over at ARRL. that kind
of thing and I see him at the Youth Forum as
well. So Sam, I did an interview with you for
Amateur Radio Newsline a few weeks ago and you
mentioned how the two of you were selected for
Youngsters on the Air and why this trip was was
so important to go on. So why don't you fill
in our listeners about who sent you guys over
there and what the goal was for you to go over
to Yoda. Okay, well this is the fifth year or
was the fifth year of the Youngsters on the Air
event. This year it was in Austria. I believe
last year it was in Italy. And this event has
picked up so much steam. It's been so successful.
that a lot of US amateur radio societies have
been looking into this as a model of how can
we interest enthusiastic youths and provide activities
and have a get -together of youth amateur radio
operators in which they can learn some new things,
meet each other, and just do some... straight
-out touristy things. So after four years of
this event picking up steam, Northern California
DX Foundation and Yasme decided to find a couple
of us, which we happen to be the two who went,
and send us out there to take part in the event
and learn about it, partake, take a lot of photos,
and come back with some ideas about, you know,
what Stuff that they do would work well here
and you know, would we need to change it? But
the goal is eventually to create a similar event
or one or many similar events in the US Okay,
so Who picked you guys out how did that all all
go? That was Glenn Johnson W zero G J. Hopefully
I remember his call sign right and That's right.
Yep, and zero a X among a couple other at the
two foundations Yeah, I gave you guys a teaser
on the I believe episode 28 with Ward silver
Thinking him for Yoda and thanking him for the
consideration and the funding as well. Mm -hmm
Yeah, very good now sterling when I first Heard
that the two of you were going. I was, I was
a little curious because you know, I know you
guys and I was like, wait a minute. These guys
have graduated college. Why are they going? Why,
why aren't my students going or, you know, why
aren't some of these, uh, other guys going, uh,
how's that working? And so, um, Lot of the programs
that we have here in the u .s. Like the culture
youth the expedition you got to be 17 or younger
or the youth forum speakers That hamvention or
young ham of the year 18 and and younger The
idea of the word Youngster is a little different
over there with Yoda. So can you explain to us?
The activities that took place over there and
how they define Youngster Yeah, sure. Youngster,
it's definitely a culture, a different culture
over there. A youngster over there might be more
portrayed as a young adult. And especially in
the ham radio world, kids, I guess, youngsters,
young people or young adults or people under
the age of 26, 27 are considered youngsters in
the ham radio world. In the U .S. that's probably
more like somebody's age 7, age 5, age anywhere
between 5 and 10 or so before you get into adolescence
or youth or young adults. So there's a lot of
words for it. But that's what they had. And I
imagine if we bring it to the U .S. we might
call it youth on the air or something similar.
There was a myriad of activities. There was a
whole week full of... activities ranging from
an ISS contact, a lot of workshops where we built
things like an HF roll -up antenna, an NFIT half
-wave antenna. We built a Slim Jim J -Pole as
well. And they provided all of this equipment
to us, by the way, as part of the application
fee, which was only 25 euro, which was really,
really good for a week -long stint in a very
nice youth hotel in Austria with all these activities.
We all got Raspberry Pi's and we made a whisper
beacon out of it. We built a low pass filter
to filter out the noise from the harmonics that
it generated. We did HamWan or HamNet. Over in
Europe, they have this, yeah, HamNet, right?
HamNet is a, to give you a quick description,
it's a high speed data protocol based on WiFi.
Yeah, and they all use, we got 5 .8 gigahertz
routers and antennas. We got to connect to that
and you could you could communicate all across
Europe with the hamnet and it's it's really well
done and really well like Distributed similar
to the ham win in Seattle and the one in Austin
and I think there's one in California too, but
it's much more spread out And I guess completed
and what else did we do Sam we did we did some
in calm? events like basically setting up a station
really quickly and learning how to send email
over the air. We did our main events, which were
I would think the castle and the ice cave excursions,
where we went to go activate a castle. You might
remember the name of it, Sam, better than me.
Fishtung Hohenwerfen. Say that three times fast,
would you? Yeah, and there we did a Castles on
the Air activation. We got to see this cool bird
presentation or this birds of prey presentation
where they had these trained eagles and hawks
and raptors and I guess they had vultures there
as well that would fly around and they talked
about it. But it was in German so we didn't understand
too much. Which, by the way, everybody spoke
English at the camp since they had 30 countries
being represented there. They decided the...
Camp language would be English, and it turns
out most people know English pretty well, you
know, with all the accents and countries that
came. It was no problem for us at all. I could
bring up the schedule. There was a whole schedule
of activities to remind me, but Sam, why don't
you take care of the last half of the week? We
did a couple of really interesting things, and
I thought one of the strongest points was the
camp. was that we really mixed up between just
straight -out ham radio workshops and touristy
activities. So the Castle of Hohenwerfen, the
Ice Cave were really more touristy than ham radio,
but we had a little bit of ham radio activity
mixed in. The Summits on the Air activation was
a big hike to the top of a couple of mountains
in Austria, which was beautiful. Austria is majestic.
And there were three different mountains that
we could go on, different levels of difficulty,
and each had a cable car or a ski lift getting
us most of the way to the top. And then we hiked
the rest and just stayed up there for a couple
of hours, socialized and operated a few portable
stations. And then finally, we did a European
style fox hunt, which is a bit different than
what I'm used to here. And that was where you
had a you were up against the clock to do a 1
.6 mile course where there were five foxes to
find, each with a little hole punch on them that
punches a pattern into your card. So one at a
time, you'd find each fox, punch your card, and
the person who won was the person who made it
back the most quickly. So it was not only a...
a radio direction finding event, but it was also
an athletic event. If you were the fastest person,
then you would do better. That was a lot of fun.
Finally, we've done a really good job keeping
in touch with the organizers and the people that
we participated with. There's been an internet
chat room that was put up by somebody there to
keep us in touch, and they've done some contests
following. In particular, we had a WSPR contest
where we took the beacons we made out of our
raspberry pies. got on the air for a week and
the person who or the team who had the highest
average distance of their top ten contacts one
we we were team u .s .a. was number two to team
germany uh... we all had a lot of fun and that's
been uh... keeping us in touch there's a couple
people um... uh... tutoring each other on morse
code there's a couple people uh... discussing
how to put better antennas And they've really
done a good job making sure that people who are
interested have been able to take the activities
forward. Yeah. Yeah, excellent. And there was
so much more to it. Like, we also had our OE2
-YOTA Special Event Station there. four HF stations
and a 120 foot tall portable mobile tower with
a big Optibeam on it. And we had this operating.
We made over 7 ,000 USOs on it during the week.
And that was a big focus point for the group.
So that was a lot of fun. And even a little volleyball,
I heard. Yeah, volleyball as well as a lake trip,
a swimming trip we went on. So it sounds like
there's a good balance there to try to get people
together. So now that you're back, Sam, and you've
had a few weeks to kind of reminisce and decompress
about the trip, what did you learn from that
experience that is possibly going to help start
a similar event here in the US? Well, that is
quite a big subject of a conversation but we
hit on a few already and one of them that I thought
was one of the best was the balance between amateur
radio activities and some time off so that Socialization
and resting and going out to bars could occur
and some activities that were just playing touristy,
like going to see the ice cave and going to the
lake and playing beach volleyball. It was a really
good mix up. The activities were well geared
towards both hams who were new and hams who were
pretty experienced. That was one thing that took
me by surprise was the this was definitely not
really it was not an introductory camp i thought
it was much more of kind of an interview camp
geared towards uh intermediate to advanced uh
youths but there were there were some of everybody
and some of the kids uh really enjoyed the ability
to uh grab a time shift on the station a lot
of them turned out to be really good operators
who had just never had the opportunity to operate
such a good station and never did things like
figuring out, oh, my antenna is pointed this
way because their antennas were just dipoles
in their yards. I think the activities themselves
were quite good. There was a lot of diversity.
There were some optional workshops in which we
had a There's some things where they explain
de -expeditions, some workshops on cell phone
technology, some emergency communications gear.
There was also a lot of tying together of the
workshops. The emergency communications antennas
or portable antennas that we made, which were
just these simple and fed high -C antennas that
worked down to about 20 meters. We did those
one day we built them and then later we took
them up on the Castle and that's where we did
our castle on the air activation. So that the
stuff kept being carried forward Finally, I think
one of the strongest parts of the event was that
they focused on Intermediate -level hams people
who were a bit older in some cases and they really
they sold it more and did it more as a an event
to let people who have interest who want to flex
their muscles flex their muscles and find people
to quit with and I think that's why there's a
hundred and twenty five participants in this
chat room that we started at the end of it and
most of us still talk about things and we're
all trying to advance in some way so certainly
a lot of other things to discuss I think those
were the main points though. Okay, so sterling
now that we've got these ideas How are the plans
coming for you know trying to do something like
this where where is this sitting now and and
What are you guys hoping to? organize in the
next year or so Well, this is a big heavy -loaded
question because one thing Sam didn't mention
is the amount of planning and effort and the
five years prior to this of learning about what
was good, what was bad. This was a very, very
well -run camp and it was done, it couldn't have
been done without the, I think, about 30 volunteer
leaders who helped. This was performed mainly
by the Austrian Radio Club Society who had a
lot of very talented project engineers and leaders,
and people were very into, and knew a lot about
teaching and leading, and especially with a youth
group like this. There was a lot of negotiations
with pricing, there was a lot of sponsorships,
tons of sponsorships actually, like well over
a couple dozen. from companies and donors and
everything like that. So the plans are really,
really in truly early stages. Currently we're
writing a sort of a proposal, sort of a lessons
learned. What have we learned from this event
that we're gonna send off to the guys who sent
us there, NCDXF and Yasme. And currently I'm
talking with a lot of interested people around.
Eventually I'll be seeing... what the ARRL thinks
of this, if they can help support us in the future,
as well as looking into venues, locations, and
then also finding the people, like this has to
get out, the word has to get out to everyone,
all the young hams out there. so that we actually
have people involved and Jamboree on the air
of the Boy Scouts has a lot of this covered so
we're going to try to leverage a lot of what
they know about youth and ham radio and using
ham radio to get a lot of credit and badges and
as well as get more youth on the air from that
event to help us with this camp that'll be mainly
focused to about ham radio as opposed to focused
on scouting and camping and that sort of thing.
We don't know how long it's going to take at
this moment. It's right now just Sam and I and,
you know, one or two other people out there.
And so I'm expecting this to snowball very soon
once we get this article out and a few newsletters
and really get the word out about our intentions
of bringing this to Ira Eugene too. Very good.
Well, get your questions ready folks. We're going
to uh, take a break and pay part of the bills,
but, uh, we'll be back here just shortly to take
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-638 -4261 So while you guys were over there
And while we're waiting on some questions to
come in and some calls You guys had a chance
to do a little little sightseeing while you were
over there did you get to do any operating on
your own away from the camp or just just Tour
around and take in the sights. What what were
you able to to do there? Well, I didn't do much
operating aside from the camp, but I did do a
lot of sightseeing. I went and hung out in Munich
for the Saturday after the camp was over to hang
out with one of my college friends, college peers
from my Mars Rover team. That was really cool.
He took me up to a clock tower where you can
climb up, I think, 14 flights of stairs. So that
was really cool and it was really convenient
too because my fiance and I are planning on going
to do like a European tour this Christmas. We're
going to like five different countries and the
whole idea of going to Europe is much more settled
with me now that I've gone there, saw some sites
and kind of understand how to spread your wings
in the European country. It was a whole new thing
to me because I've never been out of the country
that far. I think during the camp, there were
certainly some opportunities to do it around
the Grime, which was the little Austrian ski
town that we were in. I was more concerned there
with some photography than getting on the radio.
We did go and work OE2 Yoda by attaching S57LR's
FT817 to the screen in the window and loading
it up. only to stroke a c two l r c here in the
law and pass the microphone the sterling only
to stroke and zero s s c that's two contacts
rates but i did go see uh... salsburg for two
days afterwards it's all munich for the last
day uh... and i had a good time but that the
touristy stuff that we did as part of the campus
uh... phenomenal getting to see the castle the
uh... the we took the tour of the castle We saw
the birds of prey show. Meanwhile, another group
was in the Ice Rising Vault, the largest ice
cave in Austria and maybe the world. So then
we switched around noon and the two groups did
alternate activities. So there was plenty to
see and not to mention I want to go skiing in
Austria now. So maybe planning a return visit
is that a fair assessment? I think that's called
Friedrichshafen. There you go, there you go.
There's a lot of notion that a lot of the people
that I met there meet Friedrichshafen and you
know that's something I've been thinking about
for a few years now as a way to break the ice
and go to Europe. So the icebreaker turned out
to be something completely different, but you
know, what fun would it be to go and see this
and maybe operate for a day or two at some of
my new friends' stations, make a special QSL
card for anybody I work and just have a good
time. Yeah, it sounds like it was a good time.
I saw a lot of your pictures and you did get
some nice photography work in over there and
even a meal and a beverage or two. Yes, probably
one of the best aspects of the event and one
of the hardest we would have recreating in the
US is in Europe most drinking ages are between
16 and 18. I showed up at the intercultural night
they did which was basically bring something
from your country. Bring some food, dessert or
something from your country. And there were all
kinds of pastries and snacks. Yeah. Cultural
dress. Everybody had their flag shown. Yeah.
And so, you know, if I did this again, I would
have brought a couple of nice things, bourbon
whiskey. That would have been very American.
But instead, we just had a whole bunch of...
crummy mass market confections and twinkies,
some KitKats, some Snickers and a bunch of glow
sticks. They really like that. Red, white and
blue. You didn't dress up like Justin Bieber
from the U S not from Canada. Okay. Okay. I mean,
I can't say Miley Cyrus, but V three yet, but
we have team W two for the first time that this
camp. Yeah, they're really expanding. We actually
thought we were going to be mentors or leaders
because we thought it was going to be youngsters,
as in young people, as in people younger than
us. But that was totally not the case. The youngest
person there was 15 and I think the oldest was
26 or 27. I know Sam, you were up there. No,
the oldest person I was aware of who was with
a team was 32. One of the Polish team members
I think the team leader and he was a very interesting
guy. He works on Installing things on radio and
comms towers So we were talking about security
cameras that they were putting up on borders
and what infrastructure he had to put up to support
that Yeah, like I said, that was one of the things
that I was like, okay Wait a minute. I know these
guys are not you know or at least over 21, what's
going on with that? We have to consider something
like that, you know, because it might be really
shocking to hear, you know, for a lot of people
who want to, like you, who want to help organize
and garner some youth for it, that they'll be
surprised to hear, oh, you know, my 7 -year -old
or my 10 - or 13 -year -old, they're not allowed?
What for? So we might look into changing the
age and changing a whole bunch of things. It's
just going to be a big project. Well, and maybe
that you have... better selection of those younger
younger ages here in the US that they may not
have over there I know some countries actually
do have an age requirement on the yeah license
even so yeah and you know when I took when I
took my novice class You know, there was an age
limit of 13 on it and here I am walking in at
five You know and dad's just like well, you know,
he's just gonna sit here with me, you know and
come with me He'll be quiet. He won't cause any
trouble and and you know, and then all of a sudden
when I start copying code Everybody starts looking
around going Why do we have this 13 year old
age requirement? So You know it all worked out
and got my license and You know, and that paved
the way, I think, for a lot of others to start
out at that kind of, you know, that young of
an age. So, you know, it may be that you have
to change that, but then, you know, you also
have issues with, you know, are you going to
trust your six -year -old kid at a camp? With
liability. Strangers and liability. Yeah. Yeah,
so there's a lot to consider. But at the same
time, yeah, at the same time I needed, because
ham radio was the reason why I got the jobs that
I did and that I went to the school that I did
and I feel like, you know, we don't want to exclude
anybody from learning about ham radio and doing
these cool things that really, you know, set
the hook and, you know. or how you get the bug
of ham radio, you get bit by the bug. This sort
of stuff really inspired me to get more involved
in promoting youth and promoting ham radio to
youth. So the same thing goes for young people.
We want more young people so that we can have
more people in STEM fields, for example. You
know what I mean? Certainly. Much like I presented
on at the instructors forum. Hamvention that
really benefits young people who are Going into
universities and then who are coming out certainly
Radar and radio have a lot in common. They're
the same thing for a different purpose and ham
radio I think Gave me the advantage in college
of not just being oh that guy who's done his
coursework and what's well everybody has well
How are you gonna appear different than how are
you gonna appear to have some sort of advantage
and to me that was dealing with the ham radio.
I think one of the big things that we learned
here was that, at least in my opinion, I don't
know how true this is, but from my perception,
I believe the energy directed towards outreach
to young hams in the U .S. is directed, maybe
it's not directed necessarily to young, but it's
there's not enough of it directed at kind of
college age and young adult hams, the way that
it seemed to have been in Europe. And again,
I don't know if that's a correct perception,
but at least that's how I feel it is. We have
big programs like A111, a big project, which
are focused on middle schools and high schools.
And then at that point, the kids are kind of
turned loose. And I think there's a lot to be
lost there, especially if you build kids up at
that point and then don't take them further so
Yoda probably adapted for the US really could
be a building block in the next step you know
we expose people to more advanced activities
you know have ice breakers spend a week with
people your age camp and then keep in touch when
you leave And all in all, it's mutually beneficial
because, you know, all of the young people that
came back to their respective country were inspired
like us. And here we are trying to bring this
to the U .S. and our region too, and other countries
that don't have it. And the same goes for them.
They're bringing the idea that young people in
ham radio are not a dime a dozen. They're actually,
or the other way around, are not a diamond in
the rough. They're actually tons of them. There's
literally dozens of us out there who are into
this, and we need to know that as young people
so that we stay interested and included and inspired.
812 -638 -4261. 812 Net Ham 1. If you have a
question or a comment for Sam Rose and Sterling
Coffee, we have just a few minutes remaining.
So if you want to call in, give us a call or
post something on chat or on Twitter, we will
sure talk about it. The fox hunt, Sam, that you
were telling me about back in the news line segment,
that really fascinated me. And they do that on
80 meters. Yes, with ferrite bar antennas, which
are very bi -directional. So they have these
small transmitters when they use these custom
-built receivers, which I think is probably a
very simple receiver. And the ferrite bar antenna
is much more compact than a Yagi that you would
use on VHF or UHF even. And it's remarkably good
for that because it has strong nulls on either
side. Now they put some sort of second antenna
on the thing. It was a little whip on one side
that you could press a red button on the box
and it would activate that and that would attenuate
it to one side so that you could disambiguate
which side of the ferrite bar you were listening
on. And that really just meant which side of
the road is the thing on for the run that we
did. Now on Sterling's Twitter, I believe you
can watch his run. He was the video guy. I was
the still pictures guy. And so he had a GoPro
on when he did this run. So you can see exactly
what we did on Sterling's Twitter. That's n0ssc
on Twitter. We'll try to retweet that, actually.
Sure. It was intense. I got sweaty, I fell a
few times, I got wet. It was really a great cross
-country run. In fact, right now, the 18th World
ARDF Championships is going on right now until
tomorrow, I believe. And U .S. actually has a
team there. I don't know how well they're doing,
but that's currently going on right now. Yeah,
it's a much more exhilarating event than your
typical Foxconn. I've been used to doing it in
the States. Yeah, that sounded really interesting.
It'd be cool to bring that to the U .S. too.
Yeah, that was exactly what I was getting ready
to say was you think you'll do it that style?
Can you get a chance to do this here? Yeah, because
all we've done before is like the, you know,
there's a fox out in your city and you got to
go find it and, you know, drive to it with your...
tape measure Yagi, but this is a totally different
thing. You got a map, you have to have a compass,
you got to go run for it, and you're racing against
everybody. So everybody loves competition. Everybody
loves games. And I really think something like
that would be great to have over here because
I don't know if we do it. And we certainly don't
do it enough if we do. Yeah, I agree. Well, we're
just about out of time. So if there's anything
you guys want to throw in here We've we've got
about a minute to To wrap things up Unintended
No, I I think I've said it I mean there's still
so much to talk about with with Yoda and we still
have so much go to go Forward and in bringing
it over Now for sure while I you know, first
of all, I really appreciate the time on tonight
There's so much more to talk about but we'll
be we'll be putting together the what we think
about Whatever our event turns into we hope it's
gonna be successful We think it will be and you
know I'm always looking forward if they're to
working with whoever is interested in getting
together to Form this event. So absolutely feel
free to contact us Get in touch with us keywords
ed .com for me For sterling. Yeah in zero SSC.
Just Google me Okay, so N0SSE and KC2LRC are
the call signs and yeah, I want to hear more
about this and if I can interject some things
into to helping out on that, I'd absolutely love
to. So guys, thanks for being on the show tonight.
We sure appreciate it. Thank you. I really appreciate
the opportunity to talk about it. Yeah, thanks
for having us tonight. All right. Well, that's
a wrap for this week's edition of HamTalk Live.
Thanks to Sam Rose, KC2LRC, and Sterling Coffee
N0 SSC and everybody out there listening in cyberspace
and invite you all back next Thursday night at
9 p .m. Eastern Time when Skyler Fennell, KD0WHB,
the 2016 Bill Pasternak amateur radio news line
Young Ham of the Year We'll be here to talk about
his award and his future plans. For a list of
all of our upcoming guests, be sure to visit
HamTalkLive .com. For now, this is Neil Rapp,
WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7 -5, and may the good DX
be yours.