On Jan 25, 9:23 pm, wrote:
I have a situation, and would like some opinions rather than flames on
how to handle it. My wife teaches at a public school just off the
Easter Arizona Navajo reservation. Lately, a junior school science
teacher is starting up a science club and has asked me to provide for
the amateur radio side of the club and be its control operator.

She believes that the kids would be fascinated by the Morse code -
Dxing - Construction end of the hobby, even though Morse is no longer a
required test element.

The kids are mostly Navajo and thusly have a very limited technological
background (hence the reason for the club to stir the interest), so I
need something concrete with immediate payoff to keep their interest
hooked while getting them as ready as I can to write their Technician
exam. The nearest VEC is 4 hours away and I'd rather have as few fail
as possible.

I had thought to start an unlicensed micro-power code practice net
whose range would be limited to about a 30 mile radius, which is about
the size of the local reservation right next to the school.

What I want to do is provide each kid with a popcorn CW transceiver for
the colorburst frequency (3579 khz), a key, a short random wire, and a
battery. That way they could practice amongst themselves with
myself as occasional net control.

Ignoring your legal question, a suggestion:

Radio isn't too impressive among kids these days. Especially in
lesser-developed parts of the world (I honestly don't know how much
that overlaps with these kids?) everybody has a cellphone anyways.

So if Morse code is to be an attractor (and it is, being an arcane art
with secret-code aspects, going to be somewhat attractive to at least
some kids), start with wired operation. Yeah, it's really super-basic:
battery, key, beeper, wires, maybe a blinking light bulb. But if you
skip the basics (and it sounds like these kids may have already missed
the basics) then they'll get nothing out of it anyway.

I've worked with similar school-age kids in a vastly more
developed/educated part of the U.S. and they generally don't know how
to wire a light bulb to a battery even though they all know how to use
a USB keychain to exchange MP3's via myspace accounts.

If you're lucky, you'll find a one or two techie kids who take after
the detailed radio interests not too different than your own.
Otherwise, aim low, very very low in terms of complexity, in an effort
to bring up the low end rather than cater to the one or two kids who
would really benefit from your more advanced plans.

Tim.