A New Ham in the Making

Today my 7-1/2 year old grandson, Grant Kimberling, was home sick from school. After he felt better, he asked me if he could "type" on my keyer paddle. He had done this before and enjoyed sending CW and watching the letters print out on the microHAM microKEYER display. Today he started asking me how to send certain letters instead of just sending stuff at random. What he was asking for was how to send the letters of his own name. After he mastered that, he asked how to send the letters of his brother's name. I soon started the "CW Get" program so that he could see the letters in a more static position instead of while they scrolled across the microKEYER display.

In about 20 minutes he had learned 9 letters and one punctuation mark (he randomly sent "period" and saw it on the screen and kept repeating that until he had it memorized.) Soon I decided to record this event but the battery of the camcorder was dead. I put it on charge and we left to run some errands. More than 2 hours elapsed and when we came back I told him I wanted to record him sending his name and he sat right down and sent it without any questions or help from me. Click on the link below to view the short recording. At the beginning you can see the letters print out on the screen on the bottommost line. You can also click the "4 arrows" icon on the bottom right of the video to expand it to full screen. Then use your BACK button to return here.

Maybe we have a Young Ham in the Making here?

UPDATE: Five days later, Grant came back by the shack and asked if he could show his Daddy what he could do. I hooked up the keyer and he sat right down and sent his name with no hesitation, no mistakes and without any questions, failed attempts or any prompting from me! I guess the "lesson" has "stuck" with him!