First contact, in class

60 minutes · Grades 9 to 12

Bring: the club's handheld; a licensed volunteer at the radio; the First Contact simplex script printed.

Goal

Every student has spoken over the air, legally, and knows what a contact sounds like from both ends.

The rule that makes it legal (5 minutes)

A licensed control operator sits at the radio for the whole session (Part 97 §97.103). Students speak as third-party traffic (§97.115): the volunteer keys the radio, the student talks, the volunteer identifies with their callsign. Nobody encrypts anything, nobody plays music, everybody identifies.

The script (15 minutes)

Read the simplex script from the First Contact path aloud in pairs: call, answer, report, names, sign off. Then the listen-first minute: thirty seconds of silence on the frequency before anyone calls.

On the air (30 minutes)

A second volunteer, or a club member on the repeater, answers. Each student makes one exchange: name, where they are (the school, not an address), how the signal sounds. The volunteer logs each one as a milestone in the club's Wavelog station.

Simplex first if two radios are in the room; the repeater second, so students hear the difference.
A student who does not want to speak can log instead: callsign, time, report.

Close (10 minutes)

Play back what the class sounded like from the other end. Ask what was hard: the wait, the phonetics, the courage.

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