With the terrific support from Kelvin K5KGH and David KG5URA, we rolled out a new kit (Digital FM Radio) for the JSC Fall Student Interns to tackle on Monday evening, Nov 11 at the Scuba Shack next to the W5RRR radio room.
3 weeks earlier, we had the interns build a simple LED blinker kit, to introduce them into simple soldering of through hole components. For this one, as an experiment, we offer them an eBay kit which was significantly more advanced- consisting of over 50 components including a 40pin DIP and 2 surface mounted components.
So, the 5 ham radio interns were our guinea pigs to see how they could handle this ADVANCED kit build… and they did GREAT.
Intern Participants:
- Sarah KC1VCT
- Shirina KO6DOS
- Gavin KF8CHK
- Melanie
- Leo
Observations:
- They had absolutely no fear and grasped the challenge
- There was continuous gratification to see a bare PCB quickly get populated with all the numerous components
- Lots of good education and exposure to different electronic components.
- Joy when it was plugged in, and the LCD display light up with FM channels.
- K5KGH/KG5URA assistance throughout was integral to guide and advise the build
- “So Fun” was the feedback we received at the end of the 2.5 hr. build.
Conclusion:
- We’ll have to include these in future student intern project activities
- I’ll research buying them from AliExpress at 1/10 price of eBay
- Proper project build duration needs 3 hours
- Need to work-in some introductory theory (e.g. FM modulation and radio design)
- Having a pre-build kit available would be very helpful
- The included instructions were terrible!
Kelvin K5KGH will be anchoring next week’s session for kit cleanup (one of the units had an audio issue). Then, time permitting, a short lesson in Morse Code CW!
