This year is the Centennial year for the Boy Scouts of America. The Great Lakes Council planned a Centennial rendezvous for the weekend of September 24 to the 26th. Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs from Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties field will Metropark. The MC RC was asked to help set up a radio station in the event. A special event call sign of K8S was obtained. On Friday JimK8SSB, picked up the club trailer and brought it to the site. He then claimed our spot in a large tent. Around 2PM Dale, Stan, Dave and I arrived to set up. We met up with Frank Maynard NF8N, Wallace Murray KE8HR and his son BillKC8TVG. We looked over the site to determine where to set up the antenna. We quickly realized as Stan so aptly put it that it was field day all over again. We had a great big park and only a limited area in which to place our antenna. So we put up the antenna and tied a bunch of caution tape to keep everyone safe. Dale and Frank put up the 2 m beam. Later John N8KAM brought the radio out. We set it up and tested the antenna to be sure worked.
On Saturday morning we set up the HF station and the 2 m station. Frank setup a PSK 31 station and Wallace set up a satellite station. At 9 AM the scouts, families and leaders filtered into the tent. We asked the scouts if they would like to operate the radio. Several scouts were able to make HF contacts including one with a similar event happening in Colorado. When HF contacts were not possible, we were fortunate enough to have Marv KC8DQJ, standing by at his QT H to talk to the scouts. We kept him busy most of the day. The cub scouts were totally fascinated by the whole thing. If they got “mike –shy”, Marv would ask them a question about the event and soon they would be chattering away. One little scout kept looking around the station and asked “where is he?. Jim K8SSB spent a lot of time teaching CW to the scouts. He had a chart showing the code for each letter of the alphabet. He would ask each person their name and then have them find the appropriate code. He would demonstrate how to send code and then have the scout attempt to send their name on a practice key. We stayed busy right up till 5PM when that portion of the event ended.
I would like to thank Dale WA8FRD, Stan K8SB, Jim K8SSB, John N8KAM and Dave KC8OBH for helping set up and run the station as well as taking it down at the end. A special thanks to Marv KC8DQJ for being there to talk to the scouts.
