8am on Saturday June 8th, 2024 members of the Suffolk County Radio Club arrived at the Harbor Front Park in Port Jefferson for Maker Faire Long Island. This was the first year since the original Maker Faire LI, back in 2015, that SCRC was in attendance. The club booth was located directly next to the entrance, the best spot at the event by far!
Club members Ed, N2XDD, Brian, NG2S, Nicole, KD2BUF, along with her husband Steve, Eddie, KE2BYD, Brendan, KE2CQY, Jeff, KD2WVZ, Tony, KA2FZB and some friends of the club set up an amazing display of radios and ham related items. Maker Faire attendees started making their way into the event at 10am and the SCRC boot was busy with questions and information talks throughout the day. All age groups, genders and demographics came in to hear more about what we do. The club 7300 was tuned to either stations doing CW or the Maritime Mobile Net and the tones and chatter drew the crowds in. By 5pm there was not much swag left on the tables. Club members 3d printed keychains, phonetic alphabet cards, mores code cards and trinkets as well as made stickers, all with the W2DQ logo and/or website on them. There was a raffle sponsored by the ARRL for a License Manual. Anyone attendee who signed up for our email list received a free raffle ticket.
Brendan, Ed, Jeff and Steve all gave a helping hand by volunteering to assist with the soldering station for the attendees to build their very own flashing LED Maker Badge. The hard work of those members was greatly appreciated by the Maker Faire LI organizers.
A few of the makers I can recall that were at the Faire were college and high school robotics teams, 3d printing enthusiasts, cosplay costume makers, drone soccer, music makers, epoxy resin artists, and on and on the list went.
The event was overall impressively attended by people from all over the NY area, as far away as Manhattan and beyond.
Back to the SCRC activities. We collectively spoke to over 100 people during the day and close to 50 of them signed up for more information about our club. That is a new SCRC record! We spoke to people that wanted to know more about radio, current hams in local clubs and even piqued the interest of a half dozen former hams that are now looking to reactivate. One young man from Queens recently received his Technician license. After talking for some time and about 3 visits back to the booth Kyle asked if we would like to be his 1st ever contact. I jumped at the chance and grabbed an HT from my ARES NCS Box that was on display. After a quick primer on some vhf etiquette Kyle went to one area and I to another. KE2DJD made his 1st contact with NG2S on 2m FM simplex. Not only do we encourage non hams to get their license but we also encourage new hams to get on the air and break the mic fright. An ARRL 1st contact certificate along with a QSL card are already on their way to Kyle! While VHF contacts are usually confirmed this is a special occasion and should be celebrated. This is the type of experience Kyle will surely never forget.
The collective effort by the members of the SCRC made for an amazing day and a truly successful event for the club by not only garnering attention in the club and ham radio as a whole but for the new networking relationships that were fostered, new friendships that were made as well as exciting moments for some.
Awesome effort by all of you! Especially the youth and new ham involvement.