While most high school students enjoy fun, lighthearted activities in the summertime, Grant Gill was busy speaking to an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
The incoming Lampasas High School senior was one of 36 amateur radio operators selected for the Youth on the Air Camp in Huntsville, Alabama from June 14-19. For Gill, an avid amateur radio operator and space enthusiast, the camp lived up to its billing.
“I think it was probably one of my favorite experiences, honestly,” Gill said. “Just the uniqueness of it, meeting other people that are into the same things as I am. Yeah, I’d say it’s well worth it.”
Gill was introduced to the world of amateur radio as a Lampasas Middle School student. Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a licensed hobby in which operators utilize two-way radio equipment to communicate with others around the world.
There are approximately 3 million licensed amateur radio operators across the globe and nearly 750,000 in the United States.
In his free time at home, Gill has had some interesting conversations with people from around the world.
“I talked to one of the guys that developed the ball-tracking systems for Top Golf,” the student said. “Also, I talked to one of the engineers of the F4 Phantom. Probably the most interesting is the former vice president of the Pepsi Company.”
Gill learned about the Youth on the Air Camp opportunity through his former LMS Youth Amateur Radio club adviser, Gordon Thornton. The camp is a highly selective, weeklong program for young amateur radio operators ages 15 to 25. It brings together participants from across the Americas for hands-on radio training, satellite contacts and space-themed field trips.
The best part of the camp for Gill? Connecting with other amateur radio operators.
“I think I would say meeting people from other countries was my favorite part, because one of my favorite things to do on the radio is talk to people in other countries,” he said. “Sometimes the propagation with like the ionosphere is just right, and then the signal from like, Australia, will bounce all the way over here, and I can pick it up.”
As with any other summer camp, Gill started his mornings with breakfast before attending educational sessions. The first day, campers learned about DX-peditions, or distance expeditions. These are trips where amateur radio operators travel to remote or exotic locations, like small islands or faraway countries, to set up their radios and talk to people all over the world.
“That was interesting,” Gill said. “We had another one [session] that was learning about amateur satellites, basically. They have like an amateur radio repeater on them. So, you can take like a little handheld radio, call up to one, and you can hear somebody from way far away.”
Also, Gill had the opportunity to attend the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The museum includes a collection of space artifacts such as the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo 16 command module, Space Shuttle exhibits and interactive simulators.
The highlight of the trip, however, was the chance to connect with astronauts in the field aboard the ISS.
“We lined it up with NASA and the space station, and we had a 10-minute pass where our antenna was pointed at the space station and followed it,” Gill said. We were able to ask questions — each person got two.”
Gill is a fan of NASA’s past work and its ongoing efforts with the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, the International Space Station, and the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. Although new ventures like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin take up a lot of headlines, Gill believes none of it would be possible without NASA.
“A lot of people talk and think that NASA now is kind of an outdated, overblown agency,” he said. “I don’t see it that way. Without NASA, most of these space agencies like SpaceX and Firefly out in Briggs wouldn’t exist. NASA receives about $20 billion every year, which is a pretty small amount of the federal budget.”
Although the LHS senior has been involved with amateur radio for almost five years, his passion for space started as a 3-yearold, he said.
“Just the sheer vastness of space is what interests me, because we’re never going to understand the true vastness of the universe,” Gill said.
Since he was in elementary school, Gill has been a hobby rocket builder. He estimates he has developed between 20 to 30 different rockets. Currently, he is working on a 4.5-foot-tall rocket that is 4 inches in diameter. It is his biggest yet.
“The bigger it goes, the scarier it gets,” he said. “That big rocket, it is four-and-a-half foot tall. When the parachute doesn’t deploy, it is kind of scary to see such a large object coming toward the ground.”
Gill already has his future mapped out. He has hopes to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
“That’s my first choice,” he said. “Probably Purdue and then [Texas] A&M if I don’t get into either of those two.”
Before applying for college, Gill plans to stay busy building rockets. If you see something flying over Lampasas County, it’s probably not a UFO — just one of his homemade rockets.