Barral nominated for Junior Ham Operator of the Year

Austin Barral has been nominated for Junior Ham Operator of the Year for the state of Wyoming.

The award is for ham operators 18 years or younger. Zieb Stetler nominated Barral and said he is “One in a Million.”

Barral, 16, has a General License. He originally joined the Boy Scouts and got his radio merit badge under Stetler’s counsel and guidance. 

Barral took two tests for an operator’s license, both at the technician level and the general level, on the same day and passed both tests. Stetler is a volunteer examiner for the FCC. Stetler said it was very rare to see this level of expertise and success.

The winner will be announced in August. In addition, another member of their club nominated Barral for this award independent of Stetler. Stetler said that Barral has been generous in sharing equipment and other gear to help other Ham operators. Barral is also the youngest Emergency Coordinator in the state where he assists the Hot Springs County forces in the case of an emergency. 

In discussing his growing interests, Barral explained the reason he likes Ham radio is that “the emergency communication is a big part and the overall technical side of it is to make long distant contacts.”

He said that all communication today relies on the internet or wired service communication. The problem is if one part fails or something major goes on or it all collapses, ham radio still has the ability to reach out and that’s because it is peer-to-peer or point-to-point, meaning there’s no in-between buffer.

He explained, “Let’s say I was going to send a message or a text message to someone in Colorado. It goes through a tele network, maybe through the internet and beyond how you send it and there’s a buffer of something in between those two people. With ham radio it’s direct, person to person. And all it requires is an antenna, a radio, and some people.”

Barral has always been interested in electronics. When he first started looking at it, it was a hobby, building electronics, testing your own equipment, and that really caught his eye.

He said, “It taught me a lot of good skills, how to solder, how to read schematics, how to design schematics, how to repurpose older electronics, to get newer and older electronics to work together. I could sit down and look at something and take these two parts and make something different.” 

A couple of years ago Barral was with his grandfather who told him that when he was a kid in the 60s, he got into CB radio. CB Radio was popular back then because it was cheap, the solar cycle was good, so long-distance contact was easy to make.

“That kind of got my interest into it and I did some more research and found ham radio. I was able to find some people, find a club and were able to get me started and get me to where I am at today,” said Barral. 

Regarding his future in ham radio and where it could take him, Barral still wonders.

He said, “I don’t exactly know where I want to go with it. If I go military, I could be a radio operator or a radio tech and I can design stuff. I can also go into commercial applications such as Dish, Spectrum, and all of these commercial service providers that need help building antennas, designing new systems, new radios, and that’s interested me just because it’s something that brings in newer technology. Radio is pretty simple to use, it’s basically an electromagnetic wave and you can bring in new technologies. With the advances of computers its interested me to see how to cross the two together.”

If Barral is not busy with work, he will often get on the radio 15-20 minutes a day. He runs digital, which is bringing the computer side into radio. He doesn’t normally use his voice to make contacts, but he uses programs, such as SCA. It uses digital tones and sends it over the air and other stations decode that and respond. They are a few other ones similar to it that he uses because they are more efficient in transmitting. 

One of the main questions when operating a Ham radio is who are you talking to and what are you talking about?

Barral explained, “I can talk to pretty much anyone who has a radio as long as it is nothing illegal. We can talk about whatever we want, when we want, it doesn’t matter. We have access to the bands 24/7. I’ve talked to a Russian guy a couple of times, I’ve talked to people all around the state, all around the country, a couple from England. We mostly have a conversation about mowing lawns or some weird deal like that, and you can also sit there and have a conversation about trucks and other vehicles or whatever.” 

Finally, Barral explained that he thinks there is a resurgence in interest coming back in Ham radio.

“It’s one of those things that you have to show people what you can do, how easy it really is to get started and then where you can end up,” said Barral.