Last fall, under the aegis of Ham Radio Village, I was awarded a grant to take my one-day Tech class on the road. Ham Radio Village believes that more people in technical fields should have amateur radio licenses and that amateur radio is underrepresented in the hacker, STEM/STEAM, and maker communities. Currently, there is little outreach to these communities about the benefits of amateur radio in their fields.

Enter the “ham radio evangelist.” In October of 2o23, we applied for and were awarded an $18,000 grant to reach out beyond the boundaries of traditional amateur radio communities, including scientific, engineering, hacker, maker, and STEM/STEAM focused conferences where attendees might have an interest in amateur radio (e.g., DEFCON, GRCon, Maker Faire, IEEE Communications Conference).

This grant provides funding to both educate these communities about amateur radio and to streamline the process of obtaining an amateur radio license. If accepted, HRV will give a talk about amateur radio, teach a one-day Technician Class license course, and offer a Volunteer Examiner test session at an event. These activities will provide these new hams with a lifelong hobby that aligns with their professional and technical interests. And, it will also enable these new hams to bring their experiences and ideas to amateur radio, thereby advancing the hobby.

HOPE couldn’t have gone any better

HOPE XV was the first event at which we evangelized ham radio. In my mind, it couldn’t have gone any better.

On Friday, I gave a talk entitled “Ham Radio for Hackers.” (Click here to see the slides.) I wandered in about 10 minutes before the talk was to start at 1:00 pm. There were already so many people there that I thought I was in the wrong room.

Adding to my confusion, was the fact that the slide announcing the previous talk was still up on the screen. I turned around and started heading out, but caught myself before I left the room. This had to be the place, and indeed it was.

In the talk, I explained some of the basics of amateur radio, discussed some of the projects that radio amateurs are currently hacking on, and then how to get a hacking, errrr ham radio license. I probably could have gone into a little more depth on some of the projects, but in general, I think that the talk was very well-received.

Tech class yields 25 new hams

On Saturday, I held my one-day Tech class. I was concerned that attendance would be poor because:

1. They scheduled the class on Saturday, and there were lots of other interesting talks being held that day.
2. They scheduled the class to start at 10:30 am, which could have thrown off my timing.

As it turned out, the class went really well. The students asked lots of questions—which caused the class to run about an hour longer than usual—but they were all good questions. 25 hackers passed the test and got their licenses. There were some failures, but it’s unclear whether those people were in the class or not. We invited anyone to show up at 5:00 pm and take the test, whether they were in the class or not. I’m going to claim that 100% of the students passed the test.

I can say that all those who passed the test were very excited that they did. Many of them came up to me after the class and thanked me. I can also say that this group was much younger than normal. I’m guessing that there were only two students over the age of 50. There was a good number of women, too. I counted at least six women.

I really want to thank the VE team. Without them, this couldn’t have happened. They were:

• Seth, N2SPG
• Nicole, AD2IM
• Ed, N2XDD
• Grant, W4KEK
• Vlad, AF7QV

A great start

I think that this is a great start to the ham radio evangelist program. Not only did we license 25 new  hams, they all seem very interested in the hobby.

I also talked to a lot of different people about the program. One fellow, a young guy working with the Philadelphia Maker Faire, invited me to contact him about doing a class next spring.

So, onward and upward! I think the hackers at HOPE are just the kind of people we want to get into the hobby. They’re young and interested in hacking ham radio. It will be fun to see what they can do.

I’m here at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) XV, the hacker conference run by 2600 magazine. Earlier this afternoon, I gave a talk entitled “Ham Radio for Hackers.” See my slides below. I’ll be writing more about my experiences here in a future post.