The high school club
I was listening to the Soldersmoke podcast:
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke245.mp3
At one point Bill, N2CQR expresses a suspicion that some of the high school kids involved in a direct conversion build project are losing interest.
When I attended Nicolet High School 1969-1973 there was a ham radio club. A nice one with a radio shack, antennas, rigs, surplus stuff to fool around with. The club went out on Field Day each summer:
I didn't join the club until junior year. I don't think there were any licensed hams in the club when I joined. The president of the club was a lapsed Novice (Novices had one year to upgrade or oblivion). I don't know if he ever got his license again. I finally got my license during senior year,fall 1972 and did get on the club station before I finally got the HW-16 going at home.
Our big radio club project was supposed to be a fund raiser, selling a noise maker thingy that we were going to call: The Super Whoopee. It was a project called: The Orb from the Winter 1971 issue of Popular Electronics Electronic Experimenter's Handbook:
http://americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Hobbyist-Specials/Electronic-Experimenters-Handbook-1971-Winter.pdf whole issue
http://wb9kzy.com/orb.pdf just the Orb project
I remember at one meeting we watched a former club member who had graduated build a Super-Whoopee (it was a circular board that fit into a Leggs "egg") - and that was it. We never built any more or sold any that I recall.
So I guess the blood ran thin at our club 50 years ago, but before I joined there was a lot of activity.
I always seem to hear this after I get involved in something:
"you should have been here before, they were giants then" :)
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm