I've been trying to get my home station going for quite a while.  The January 2018 Kids Day event gave me a reason to get at least a temporary antenna in the air, and get two of my boys involved with amature radio.

I quickly discovered coax becomes very difficult to work with when it's hovering around 0 F.  But determined to get something going, we hoisted our speaker-wire, 40 meter, inverted-V up 15 feet on an aluminum flagpole.

Expectations weren't high with such a meager antenna installation, but Jacob, six, and Andrew, four, were elated to make five Kids Day contacts.  They did a great job of clearly saying their name, age and location over the radio; Papa was proud.

My thanks to everyone we worked for digging our little signal out of the noise.

73, Nathan, Jacob, and Andrew Lyons