I have had several teachers ask me about starting an amateur radio club at their school, so I decided to make this page to help them with that. Starting a licensed amateur radio club at your school with its very own call sign is very easy to do. We started one at our school in 2015. Here is the process:
1) You must have a trustee. This can be any licensed amateur radio operator. The trustee is the person who decides who can operate the station and who the control operator is any time the station is being operated. (A control operator must be a licensed operator. Station operation must conform to the license class of the control operator present.) The trustee does not have to be a teacher or employee of the school but in my opinion it is more practical if they are.
2) You must have four club officers-- a president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. The trustee can also be a club officer, but does not have to be. Club officers do not have to be licensed. In fact, none of ours are licensed except for me.
3) You must have club by-laws/constitution (sometimes referred to as the "Document of Organization").
4) You must have minutes recorded from the first meeting showing election of club officers and adoption of by-laws/constitution.
4) The trustee has to have a signed copy of their license.
5) You must complete a Form 605-C.
I have links to a shared folder below that contains our bylaws, minutes, 605-C form, and also a scanned copy of the 605-C form we submitted at the bottom.
You've now completed the hardest part. To get your club licensed now, simply fill out the 605-C form and then attach the following: 1) signed copy of the trustee's license 2) copy of minutes from first meeting 3) copy of bylaws/constitution. Now mail it it to the following address: ARRL VEC, 225 Main St, Newington CT 06111. No fee is required. In a few days you will be granted a club license and assigned a club call sign for your club to use when operating. That is all there is to it. It's very simple.
Feel free to use our bylaws/constitution and meeting minutes as a framework for your own. We set ours up so that the officers are all school staff members. If you wanted to have students in those roles and periodically hold elections for each position you could do that. We just wanted to focus on technology during our precious little club time instead of holding elections and having officer meetings.
You do not have to have any type of radio equipment or station to get licensed. It is perfectly acceptable to get the license and then start working on building a station later as time and funding permits.
Here is a link to a shared folder from where you can view/download all of the documentation described above that we used to apply for our school club license.
Radio Club Application Shared Folder
Good luck and please contact me if I can help you with anything!
Chris Laster