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Ham Radio Jepperdee
There is great entertainment value in ABC-TV’s Jeopardy! program. This author sees educational opportunities everywhere; wouldn’t it be great to be able to play a game like this for a club program or for a review session after a licensing- exam course? A student at Siena College provided a template for a quiz game in PowerPoint; our junque box was large enough for construction to proceed. After two full evenings at the workbench, Ham-Radio Jepperdee was born.
My hardware includes push-buttons, lock-out circuitry, lights, and a sounder. DC power is provided by a wall-wart to terminals shown as circles on the left edge of the schematic. I have constructed both a 6-volt version and a 12-volt version of Jepperdee, and I’m currently building a second 12-volt unit. (I gave one to a cousin who is a teacher.)
The electromechanical relays at the heart of the project are not state-of the-art, but they were immediately available. Anyone wishing to build a device like mine may choose to use solid-state circuitry. The speaker symbol on the right of the figure is used to denote an attention-getting alarm.
Although it can stand alone, my quiz-game gadgetry is more fun when paired with Ham-Radio Jepperdee PowerPoint software. Submitted along with this article is a complete game file. Slides 1 and 2 are introductory; slide 3 is instructional; slide 4 is the circuit diagram (perhaps worth describing during a presentation); slides 5 and 6 are the game boards. The rest of the slides complete the game, and they include many features of the familiar TV show.
Left-clicking on any numerical entry on the game board yields a question; the very next frame gives the answer. [Exception: a player may get the Daily Double banner; the slide gives on-screen instructions.] It requires almost no effort to change the wording on any frame of the PowerPoint; the game can be changed as drastically as necessary to suit any purpose.
Ham-Radio Jepperdee (attached) is meant to be entertaining. On ARRL’s web site at http://www.arrl.org/instruction-exam-practice-and-review, one can find several exam-prep Jepperdee games whose questions have been taken from current question pools. These are entertaining and educational.