Amateur radio club losing its Hall of Science signal
BY Clare Trapasso
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Thursday, March 12th 2009, 10:44 AM
AN AMATEUR radio club that has been doing volunteer demonstrations at the New York Hall of Science for more than 35 years may soon be in search of a new home.
The Corona museum is undergoing extensive renovations and no longer has enough space to host the club, museum officials said.
Though nothing has been finalized, the club has been talking to other museums about finding a permanent home.
“It looks pretty likely to me that we’ll leave the museum by the end of June,” said New York Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club President Tom Tumino.
His group started an online petition in December to protest the move. It has garnered more than 1,300 signatures to date.
“We’re 96 volunteers who paid and volunteered their time to maintain an exhibit,” Tumino said. “I can’t imagine why the museum would ever want us to leave.”
Robert Logan, the museum’s executive vice president and chief operations officer, said the decision was just a matter of logistics.
“We have maxed out our space,” he said. “The time has come to move into the space with exhibits that draw more people and involve more of our visitors.”
On weekends, volunteers teach visitors how amateur radio works before putting them on the air. Sometimes they’re able to contact ham radio users from around the world.
The club was asked last year to take its antennas down from the Great Hall, now closed for renovations. After club members complied, they were told not to put new ones up. This effectively shut the club down.
Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the ARRL, the national association for amateur radio based in Newington, Conn., said the biggest losers are the museum’s visitors.
“The kids will have lost being exposed to the opportunity that amateur radio presents,” Pitts said.
“This is where kids can get hands-on learning. This is where engineers come from.”
Tumino, who was first exposed to amateur radio at the Hall of Science as a child, agreed.
“When I put a kid in a seat in front of the radio and he turns the dial and tries to make a contact, I don’t know if the Central African Republic will come back to him or Germany or Japan or Kansas,” Tumino said.
“That’s what makes it so exciting. And that could be lost.”