January 2, 2011 was my (and my club's) first attempt at running a Kid's Day event. We are a small club in a very rural area, but decided to give it our best shot anyway. We contacted hams, school districts in 3 counties, several area newspapers and the area skywarn organization, and had others mentioning our Kid's Day event on repeater nets more than 100 miles from the site, so we did have high hopes, but no expectations. We had 2, 2-meter rigs for voice, an HF on 80 meters, another HF on 20 meters (converted to psk31 about halfway through the event), and a winlink setup on 2-meters as well. We had some military gear on display, had some code practice oscillators out (3 straight keys and one set of paddles) with morse code+phonetic alphabet sheets for the kids to take home. We also had ICOM coloring books, flyers about the ARRL, AREA/RACES, and how to find other our (and other) radio clubs in the area, and some donated copies of QST magazine as well.

The day of the event started out pretty cold (about 13 degrees with winds 10-20mph) and we were battling another event...week 17 of the NFL schedule (we're in Packer country, near the Illinois border), but about 15 minutes after the announced start time, the visitors started to arrive. They came in small groups of 3 or 4 and some bigger groups of 7 or 8 at a time. Our greeter showed them the flow of the room and what they could do and then let them go to whatever area peaked their interest. Some folks stayed around for as much as an hour. while others only 20-30 minutes. When the day was done and we looked at our guest book, we had a rough total (some folks never signed in) of 65 guests, about half of them under the age of 15!

We had several families saying that they were interested in getting into ham radio as a family hobby, one young family that was studying to be missionaries interested in how amateur radio could help them communicate back home, and several homeschool groups that invited several of our members to come give them a more detailed seminar on how they could get started, and possibly work amateur radio into their curriculuum.

Over all, this was a resounding success. We hope to take our lessons learned (we did learn more than a few) and apply them to June and to next January as well. Some of the lessons could be applied to 'Field Day' as well (publicize the event to the general public...maybe you'll get more folks coming to check it out.)

Follow-up: We saw one of the families again at a hamfest on the Saturday after Kid's Day. Mom had taken (but failed) the Tech test, but she wasn't discouraged...instead, she bought a 2 meter radio to listen in on, and a book to study for her Tech test! (While she's failed, she hadn't studied and still got more than 60% right!). Another ham family in the making!