The Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Operators Club will offer free classes to people who want to get a radio operator's license.

Orientation is at 8 a.m. Jan. 17, with classes beginning Jan. 31 and continuing Feb. 7, 14, Feb. 21 and March 7. The final class will include testing for the FCC license. Classes start at 8 a.m. and last four hours. They will be held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1048 W. Cape Rock Drive in Cape Girardeau (at the bottom of Snake Hill in Cape Rock Village).

The classes are free. The study materials cost $18.71 and testing costs $15.

"Part of the orientation is to get a head count so we know how many books to order," said Phil Nash, club spokesman and instructor. "We'll talk about ham radio, what's all involved, as best as we can, and about how much money they might expect to spend on buying equipment and that sort of thing. You can buy new equipment, if that's your preference, but there's a lot of good bargains out there for used equipment. We'll help any way we can."

He said many ham operators go on to complete Community Emergency Response Team training through Homeland Security.

"The reason we do that is we have so much of a variety of potential disasters here -- ice storms, as we witnessed last year, flash floods, earthquakes and tornadoes," he said. "In this area, in particular, if something like that does come up, without the hams, it might be several days before the county can come up with sufficient communications help to take care of things. If we have a network of hams, whether we actually work directly with an emergency agency or not, we have our own networks to help with humanitarian needs."

For more information, call Nash at 243-4858, or e-mail ldnash@hotmail.com.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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