Last week at Scouts we covered part of the Communicator Badge. I like to demonstrate shotwave listening to them, which can be done easily using a software defined radio receiver and a laptop. This allows me to demonstrate things like Morse Code, decoding using the CW Skimmer software (to prove I’m not making it up) and give them an idea of the “Proper Message Passing Procedures” and “Use of Phonetics and Q-Codes” parts of the badge requirements.
With the demo complete, and what sounded like oriental music in the backround, we made Morse Code beepers. This activity went down really well and enabled the Scouts to tick off “Make a Morse Code Oscillator” and “Send and receive a message”.
The Communicator Badge is about to change, I think for the better. Morse Code will still be there.
The Oscillator
The simplest oscillator for a Scout to make is a piezo buzzer with a battery and push-button. These parts are readily available in large quantities for little cost online. The circuit was made using copper tape, so avoiding the need to teach and supervise soldering. Some scouts built onto wooden squares. Others built onto the paper with the Morse Code lookup table printed on it.
The parts kit (as sent to one Scout who wanted to rebuild one with his Dad)
My reference implementation
And the version built by my daughter and brought home to show Mum
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