CALLING ALL SCOUTS TO LEARN HAM RADIO USE.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

CHATSWORTH - Surrounded by rocks, their gear lashed to the branches of a tree, the Scouts searched for Spain and heard Honolulu.

Ears attuned to the warbling tones of Robert ``Hutch'' Hutchinson's ICOM 375 ham radio, three area troops of Boy Scouts gathered in Sage Ranch Park on Saturday to listen in on the world. Their goal: connecting via radio with troops all around the world, reaching as far as Indonesia. The prize: merit badges.

``Calling CQ, calling CQ,'' said Hutchinson, an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 464 from Woodland Hills, as he spoke into the unit, employing the universal call for listeners. ``This is Whiskey Nine London Quebec Italy. Jamboree on the air, do you copy?''

And a crowd of expectant Scouts nodded, hoping he'd find some foreign ears. Though the conditions didn't permit contact at that moment, they'd earlier ran across a Spanish broadcaster and one out of Hawaii. By the end of their two-day campout, they aimed to learn about the art of communications in an era of Internet and cell phones and earn their radio badges.

``There's some irony here,'' said David Hanson, also an assistant scoutmaster. ``We're out in the middle of the forest to learn about electronics.''

Each of the 28 Scouts could earn electrical, electronics and radio badges, learning Ohm's law, how to draw a schematic and how to spell their names in Morse code. They wore jackets against the cold and munched string cheese for lunch, the sound of the generator powering their radio humming in the background.

Wes Patton, a 13-year-old with Troop 127 in Agoura, affixed two resistors, a circuit board and a couple of capacitors to a battery, making a small electronic test kit. He had a rough knowledge of electricity already, though he admitted it came more from his preferred rock band than study of amperes.

``My favorite band is part of this merit badge - AC/DC,'' he said, grinning. ``I can learn about electronics so if my CD player breaks, I can fix it.''

Most kids don't think about those things these days, tossing out electronics at the first sign of failure, abandoning ham radio for chat rooms and Blackberries.

But as he watched his charges learning the phonetic alphabet and transforming dots and dashes into letters, Hutchinson smiled with pride, hoping that teaching the basics of electronics and communication would sow the seeds of future innovation.

``We're in a generation that doesn't do much experimenting, but you're looking at tomorrow's engineers,'' said Hutchinson, a certified public accountant by trade. ``They need to learn these things.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 3) Robert Hutchinson of Woodland Hills, above, talks to another ham radio operator in Spain as Boy Scouts and leaders from the Los Colinas District wait anxiously for a response Saturday at Sage Ranch Park in Chatsworth. The frequency is adjusted on a radio, left, as 13-year-old Steve Ruiz of Troop 464, below, waits to hear a voice from across the world.

Joel P. Lugavere/Special to the Daily News