eHam
eHam Forums => Youth => Topic started by: KD6YTS on August 11, 2020, 05:45:46 AM
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There used to be all sorts of comics and such with ham radio to get kids interested in the hobby. Does anything like these exist any more?
73
KD6YTS
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Back when this Ham was a kid I enjoyed getting and reading the adventures of "Carl and Jerry" each month in Popular Electronics magazine.
Found this site which has gathered these stories together ...
Carl and Jerry from Popular Electronics
http://www.copperwood.com/carlandjerry.htm
An Appreciation By K7JPD Dnunteman
"I discovered electronics in 1963, when I was eleven, by digging around in the stuff people put out on the curb on garbage day, and dragging home dead radios and TVs for avid dissection in the garage. And for years I pieced together radios out of chassis pickins' and Fahenstock clips, guided by books like Harry Zarchy's Using Electronics and Alfred Morgan's The Boy's Second Book of Radio and Electronics. My best friend Art, who lived across the alley, got into electronics a year or so later, but he had something even better: Stacks and stacks of old Popular Electronics magazines, given to him by his Uncle George, who was an electrical engineer for the phone company. We both prowled through them incessantly, looking for cool projects to build.
We saw lots of cool projects. And before too long, we saw ourselves there as well."
(Just the first paragraph .. Continued at site)
Adventure stories for kids, with or without radio related, are always fun to read.
One never knows where they may lead. For me, it was 1960 at age 13, than at age 14 Novice Ticket.
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http://www.arrl.org/shop/Oscars-Amateur-Radio-Adventure/
Oscar's Amateur Radio Adventure
While visiting his Grandparents, fourteen year old Oscar finds an old wireless radio in the basement. Taking an interest in radios, he discovers Amateur Radio and learns about "hams" using their radios to talk to each other across the country and around the world. The adventure continues when Oscar and his friend earn their Amateur Radio licenses and visit a solar powered ham radio station in the Australian Outback. Oscar soon realizes that this hobby is a means of making friends from all over the world with untold opportunities for new adventures.
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There used to be...anything like these exist any more?
I think there's a much important factor. There used to be a very popular medium known simply as "radio."
In the 1950s "radio" was mostly AM broadcast. But a "radio" was a radio: it brought useful information and entertainment, much of it produced locally, and required the skills of turning a tuning knob, adjusting a volume control and, quite possibly, attachment of an antenna.
Now we have the 'net, "schmart"phones, wi-fi/bluetooth devices with a droid (Alexa, Siri, etc.)
to talk to, and so on.
When "radio" involved a radio, with tuning, volume (and possibly tone) control, antenna connect, using those controls/augmentations were part of the public consciousness.
I forgot that in the days of "radio" there was also, on every device, an "off" button.
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The economics of publishing has changed due to inventory taxes. To avoid paying taxes publishers don't carry titles any more. Last year's best seller goes on closeout to legitimately avoid paying taxes. The way to make a ton of money as an author is to write a new romance novel each year so the publisher can print a new title every year.
Zak W1VT
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Or have someone else write the yearly novel while you put your name on it and get a piece of the pie.
James Patterson and others become multi millionaires
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I remember “radio”. Listening to dramas, comedy, adventure on a dark and stormy night. Someone gave me a SW radio that was surplus to him. It hummed and glowed in the dark. I punched a hole in the screen in my bedroom window and ran a long wire ..probably 80 feet.. up into a tree. This was 1957. (Got in a lot of trouble for the screen). The radio was right next to my bed and I listened till all hours to the strange conversations, sometimes CW, sometimes AM. I was 14. I think, don’t quote me on this, that the ham who gave me the radio was W6YIY. He was Yoke Item Yoke. Radio is so simple, so clean, so versatile and pure. Today it is none of those things....guess that’s why I’ve been CW only for decades.
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There used to be all sorts of comics and such with ham radio to get kids interested in the hobby. Does anything like these exist any more?
73
Probably not in circulation but check the internet archive.
KD6YTS
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Many things have changed and likely you won't find very much, if any, new humor about radio for youths or otherwise. But the cool thing about the internet is that many folks have worked hard and made such things from the past easily available to the rest of us, often all in one place. Find them, enjoy, laugh, share, and thank the contributor(s) where appropriate! :)
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There used to be all sorts of comics and such with ham radio to get kids interested in the hobby. Does anything like these exist any more?
73
KD6YTS
Arrl used to have an Archie comic about ham radio, but it is long since out of print. I have several copies that I got from ARRL about 20 years ago. Icom had a series of comics on their web page devoted to amateur radio. I guess they still do. If kids today are anything like my 20 year-old nephew and 16 year-old nieces, they have all of about a 20 second attention span, and then it is back to either staring at the damn iPhone screen, or the Xbox or Playstation. We can't get our nieces and nephew to even put down the phone and talk to their grandparents when they come over for dinner, such as for Thanksgiving tomorrow, but I digress. You have to find a kid that genuinely WANTS to learn about radio and electronics to get them interested in amateur radio. I was always fascinated with how things work, so I always had a desire to go from the foolishness of CB radio to something a little more classier. Good luck, because I know that there are kids out there that still have a love for learning about radio and electronics.
73,
Michael KU4UV
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That all comes from the convenience of using the television and video games as babysitters.
My parents turned the TV off and sent us outside to play.
Wintertime sledding, pond hockey, snowball wars, summertime basketball, baseball, football, apple and pinecone wars, swimming, and helping in the hay field kept us busy all the time.
But hey I grew up in the country side.
Balancing the exposure to TV and other influences is a hard task.
Even today ( I'm almost 62) I'm involved with youths and paintball.
I'm also introducing amateur radio.
I wish there were more of the comics and such to spark more interest
Maybe then some of the boredom can go away.