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A young man sat hunched over a computer screen in the morning hours just outside the Salt Lake City BSA Headquarters watching people miles away dropping off sacks of canned food items, and also monitoring YRC (The old Yellow Freight) dispatching trucks from their headquarters to pick up sites around the valley. Brandon Bauman, an Amateur Radio Operator, was part of that group known as Hams that each year assists the Boy Scouts in the Scouting for Food Project providing communications.
Brandon Bauman KG7RWO at BSA Headquarters
Ham Radio Operators are known around the world for their help in the communities where they live, providing assistance to groups like the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, and many other organizations that they serve without compensation in many ways and different projects, not just in local and regional emergencies which they are well known for. They are expected to provide their own equipment, and come ready with needed food, water,and shelter that they need for up to three days. They also provide their own power source, often solar panels and portable generators to keep their batteries charged for around the clock operation if needed.
A Small band of Licensed Amateur Radio Operators in our Salt Lake Valley successfully used these skills and equipment today with a relatively new Ham Radio Technology that they call BBHN or Broad Band HamNet (we would call it Wi-Fi on Steroids!) for the first time in the Salt Lake Valley at the BSA Scouting For Food project. BBHN uses equipment similar to that in your home that provides your ordinary home Wi-Fi signal, but they make it go farther than we do in our homes - a whole lot of miles farther! In this exercise today by the Hams as they are often called, they covered a large portion of the valley, from high up on the East Bench near the Highland High "H" north to the University of Utah area, and clear west to about the center of the valley! Now that is what I call some really fine Wi-Fi coverage! (More than 8 miles on just one link!)
This Skilled group of Amateur Radio Operators linked together thirteen separate units or Nodes as they call them, spread across the valley together to form a network that is like a mini private Internet. They then used a program called TeamTalk over this network to send live video pictures and audio back to the BSAHeadquarters showing them live what was happening at locations including food drop off sites, and even the YRC (Yellow Freight) Headquarters - a huge step forward in technology from the old Ham Radio days of the chirping and beeps of Morse Code!
This group of Hams led by Robert Jelf, a retired Pastor from Magna, who has the FCC assigned
Amateur Radio Call Sign of KG7OHV, Set up their equipment at 8 AM in the morning, and continued until things shut down later in the day.  
Some of the other Hams in the group with their Radio Call Signs were:
Eugene McWherter (N7OVT)
Carol McWherter (KC7LLW)
Scott McAllister (W7OXZ)
Brandon Bauman (KG7RWO)
Jerry Spillman (W7OHU)
Grant Gardner (KC7HOU)
John Hurst (KF7NQW)
Chachi Kruel (KG7OHT)
Taylor Miller (KG7OHS)
Charles Gray (KE6QZU)
Randy Ellefson (KD0BAW)
21 March 2015 by:
David T. Bauman
KF7MCF
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