The Bosque Amateur Radio Club is connecting people in Ukraine. Here's how.

There's a reason the Federal Communications Commission refers to HAM radio operators as the Amateur Radio Service. If you ask Bosque Amateur Radio Club members Bill Kent, Larry Elkin, Art Nichols, Terry Zipes and the club's president, Jerry Aceto, the answer is rooted in a shared fundamental belief: to help those in need.

"We have a saying," Kent explained. "When all else fails, HAM radio works."

But it's not just the radios that work on behalf of the public; their operators do as well. For nearly the past two years, the Bosque Amateur Radio Club has been working on behalf of Care4Ukraine.org, providing the group with radios and instructions on how to build handmade antennas so its members can communicate in the field.

The effort has a deeply personal meaning to club member Art Nichols, whose brother Joseph founded and runs Care4Ukraine.org.

"A little over a year ago, I got a call from (Joseph). He knows I'm an amateur radio operator and he was saying he could really use the club's help," Nichols said.

The help Joseph sought was mobile radios for his 30 volunteers to use in the field and communicate with each other in sometimes dangerous environments near the front lines of Ukraine's war with Russia.

According to its website, Care4Ukraine.org, the group's work focuses on supporting people who do not have refugee status and have been forced from their homes and cities in Ukraine. The organization provides those displaced with daily social support, basic medical and dental care and learning programs for children. Safe and warm shelters also are provided.

According to Nichols, so far, the club, through $700 donated by individual club members, has purchased and provided Care4Ukraine with roughly 14 mobile radios. The donated radios Care4Ukraine uses are part of its newly named "BARCnetUA" radio program. The "BARC" part of the name honors the efforts of the Bosque Amateur Radio Club by using its acronym.

In addition to the donated radios , the club also has provided Care4Ukraine with two handmade antenna designs that can be built out of items found at a hardware store and can be easily replicated.

"One (antenna) is called omnidirectional and transmits in all directions, and the second antenna we came up with is a directional antenna that will beam like a flashlight and it goes much farther," club member Bill Kent explained.

The club plays on a traditional design used for several decades. Kent and his fellow club members added a few tweaks to build the antennas, using materials easily accessible to Joseph Nichols and his volunteers in Ukraine.

Made from several PVC pipes, tape measures, wires and different styles of hose and radiator clamps, the design is lightweight, easily replaceable and can be assembled and disassembled in a matter of minutes. The only thing different? "Their antennas are in metric," Kent said jokingly.

Both antennas are "passive," Kent said, which means they contain non-electronic parts and rely on a radio connection to operate.

With about 159 years of combined HAM radio experience between Kent, Elkin, Art Nichols, Zipes and Aceto, they say they enjoy putting their skills and knowledge to use for such a worthy endeavor.

"We can't go over there, but we can send equipment over there to help those people," Zipes said. According to Nichols, Care4Ukraine.org has built and deployed 65 antennas.

And the Bosque Amateur Radio Club isn't done helping Ukraine . Members plan on purchasing more radios for Care4Ukraine.org, this time with larger, easier-to-read screens, and they continue to keep tabs on the use of the antennas.

"I think it's so important that we should be more," Kent said. "I've had a good life. I want to give back, and amateur radio is a very good way to do it."