About Us

We are the West Palm Beach Amateur Radio Group and we demonstrate Ham Radio to thousands of young visitors every year at the South Florida Science Museum. We built and maintain WS4FSM a permanent Ham Radio Exhibit at the Museum. Our volunteer Hams staff the room every weekend and during the week for school field trips, camps, etc. The youngsters (and some parents, teachers and counselors) get the chance to get on the radio and talk to other hams all over the world. And they learn about Morse code and learn to send their name in code. Kids Love Code! We are working on adding more electronics exhibits and improving the equipment we have to make it easier to make contacts when the kids are on the radio.

We want to put more modern radios in since the kids are more excited by graphical displays and seeing digital readouts. And a Tower and Beam would be a great addition to improve reliability of communication. A lot of the time now club members bring in their radios from home to use for a few days. But most of us are retired and on fixed incomes and we do not have much in the way of current generation equipment available.

We know there are a few manufacturers of this equipment who have helped out other groups but we have gotten very little help from them. We now cover the name of the equipment manufacturers with tape so as not to promote any companies who have not helped us. After all when the youngster goes home and tells his parents what brand of equipment he wants to buy we are not promoting any brand. We also do not make any recommendations in our licensing classes. We will support those who support us. That just seems the fairest way to do it. Parents come in and see their kid learning on a brand A,E,H,I,K,M,T,Y etc radio and they decide to buy that brand for them when they pass their test or even before so they can listen as they learn. We can not promote those who do not support our kids.

We do pass out catalogs from MFJ and Ham Radio Outlet because they are the only ones who have responded to our requests for catalogs. We used to pass out Icom Comic Books (although most of the kids are too old for them) but can not get those anymore.

And we pass out a lot of ARRL literature because they have supplied that. They have given no other help at this point. We will keep trying.

We offer classes almost continually and use both the ARRL manuals and the Gordon West W5YI manuals and most of the students prefer the Gordon West books. We think both are worth while and each has its' own merits and should find a place on your Ham Radio Bookshelf.

You can get a lot more information about our group by visiting our main website at