Mecha Mules Radio Club Scores Big

The Wahkiakum Mecha Mules entered the Amateur Radio School Club Roundup last February with modest goals: Score better than the previous fall, talk to more schools than before, and talk to stations in more states than before. The goal of this contest is to use Amateur Radios to talk with as many other schools in as many other states as possible. No cell phones, no land-lines, no internet. Our two high school leads, Peter Vik and Cor Hoogendoorn and our three lead middle school assistants, Steve, Jett and Teagan really knocked it out of the park. Our final score was over ten times better than we had ever done before!

Due to a computer hack at the scoring headquarters the results have only been published in the last week. We placed second in the world for high schools! We placed 9th overall among all clubs, counting adults and colleges. And, of all of the entrants, only one other club had talked to stations in more states than us: Purdue University Amateur Radio Club. We talked to 49 states, missing only Mississippi. Purdue had all 50 states plus Puerto Rico. Elite company, eh?

We used the new radio clubhouse on the high school grounds: the second story of the green concessions stand by the football field, and we used the big loop antenna built by the N7WAH Wahkiakum Amateur Radio Club. That club also had a goal for our contest: to prove that we can talk with folks anywhere, and we smashed that goal. This clubhouse will double in an emergency as a station to get health and welfare traffic out of our county to wherever it needs to go. The school club thanks the local ham club for helping make this happen, especially Steve K7SH and Bob WB6AGE. We also received $2600 from ARRL for new equipment and learning materials. Thank you! We now have our own radios instead of borrowing from others.

The next contest is called the "Salmon Run" in mid September where we try to contact every county in our State, and every other State tries to contact us. A month later is the fall School Club Roundup with the same rules as last February. These contests serve as additional testing of the resilience of this part of our County emergency communication system. Contact the school district, the N7WAH radio club, or the sheriff's department if you want to get involved.