Sequestered behind a room divider in the corner of the Berthoud High School library, a group of students, teachers and adult volunteers leaned over a radio.
“CQ, CQ, this is high school station Whiskey Zero Bravo Hotel Sierra,” Sergey Eggers, a junior at Berthoud High School, said into the radio microphone. “Standing by for a call from anywhere.”
As a participant in the American Radio Relay League’s School Club Roundup, Eggers issued a call for a random radio contact anywhere in the U.S. or abroad. Berthoud High School — also known by its call sign W0BHS — is in its first year taking part in the competition, which challenges amateur radio clubs at schools around the nation to make as many radio contacts as they can within 24 hours.
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a form of electronic communication used by hobbyists to talk on designated radio bandwidths between cities, across the world, or even into space.
While amateur radio operators usually must pass a test to be licensed by the Federal Communications Commission before taking to the airwaves, the students can participate with supervision from a rotating pool of licensed volunteers.
About 90 students signed up to take a turn either at the mic or as an information logger during the week-long competition. Each student could take one or more 32-minute shifts at the radio during their lunch breaks, study halls or library time.
The competition imposes strict rules — a station may operate no more than 6 hours in a 24-hour period, and a maximum of 24 hours during the 107-hour event. The teams must also take breaks after each shift of 10 minutes at minimum.
By midday Friday, the students had logged close to 400 contacts from 40 states, four Canadian provinces and six countries, including Germany, Finland and Kosovo.
BHS has had an amateur radio club for three years, said Scott Kindt, a physics and chemistry teacher at the school and the radio club’s faculty sponsor. Though participation in the club has been growing each year, Kindt was looking for new ways to get even more students interested in amateur radio operation.
Kindt, who does amateur radio himself, found a solution when he met Chris Kochenour, a retired teacher with 32 years of experience as an amateur radio operator. Kochenour moved to Loveland from Vermont last year, and during his teaching career, he coached students in the School Club Roundup for 17 years, including the group of students that won the contest’s high school category in 2014.
“I said, ‘I’ve got just the thing,'” Kochenour said.
BHS was able to get its radio equipment with the help of one of Kindt’s students. The student’s grandfather, an amateur radio operator, had died and left “thousands of dollars” of radio equipment to the student, who gave it to Kindt to sell so the school could purchase more modern equipment with the proceeds from the sale, Kochenour said.
The competition, considered a type of radiosport, offers a division each for elementary, middle, high school and college students, non-school clubs and individuals.
Based on the week’s totals and last year’s winning scores, advisors expected that the students will come in fifth in the nation once scoring is complete.
“We don’t care where they are, we just want a volume (of contacts),” Kochenour said. “The fun is trying to get as many as you can.”
BHS junior Stuart Reckase, who holds an entry-level radio operator license, said he originally joined the radio club with encouragement from Kindt, and has found amateur radio interesting to learn. He said he likes that radio is more analog than today’s primary communication device, the internet, and that it lets users design and build different setups.
“There’s so much customization you can have with the equipment you use … it’s really interesting to learn,” Reckase said.
David Eckhardt, one of the competition’s licensed volunteers, has been an amateur radio operator for 59 years. Eckhardt said that in addition to amateur radio’s applications in fields like astronomy, geography and engineering, the radio helps students use technology to interact with others in meaningful ways.
“It’s not texting; it’s actually talking to someone on the other end,” Eckhardt said. “Getting back into the social world … is a real problem in today’s world, with our electronic toys.”
Gavin Ingalls, a junior ROTC member and student at BHS, said he might get to apply what he has learned about radio in his future military career, and he likes the exploratory element of making random radio calls during the roundup.
“I really like that you get to talk to people from all around,” Ingalls said. “You get to explore the world.”
Audrey Nankervis, a senior at BHS, was the most prolific radio operator on the BHS team, making about 80 contacts during her shifts Thursday and Friday. Nankervis, who is looking to study chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins next year, said the secret to her success was simply speed.
“I just talked really fast,” she said.
Based on this year’s success, students and staff say BHS will very likely compete in the roundup again next year.
Final scores for the winter 2018 roundup will be available in March.
Julia Rentsch: 970-699-5404, jrentsch@reporter-herald.com
