Shortly after setting up his ham radio Saturday morning at the Lawrence Public Library, Matt May and a few of his cohorts in the Douglas County Amateur Radio Club listened in on a conversation between a young man staying at his father’s cabin in Arizona and a man in Zimbabwe.

“You get stuff like that all the time,” May said.

May and other club members spent most of Saturday at the library sharing their dial-tuning expertise with anyone who was interested.

“We do this every year to sort of reach out to anybody who thinks they might be interested in amateur radio,” said club president Earl Schweppe.

Four years ago the club had about 40 members, he said. Today, it has more than 60.

“We’re alive and doing well,” Schweppe said.

The club meets at 7 p.m. every third Wednesday of the month at the library.

The rise of the Internet, e-mail and chat rooms hasn’t diminished club members’ interest in the wonders of radio communications in the least.

“People tend to forget that a whole lot of the world is without the Internet  Zimbabwe, for example,” said May, an avid proponent of getting amateur radio operators involved in emergency preparedness efforts.

“And the Internet doesn’t work in the middle of a field when the power goes off,” he said.

That was especially true earlier this year when a tornado cut off electricity to the fire department in North Canton, Ohio, and the department’s backup generator conked out.

“Amateur radio operators stepped right in,” said Byron Berger, a former Douglas County Amateur Radio Club member who now lives in Ohio. He was in Lawrence, visiting his father, Elvis Berger, and overseeing a demonstration of Morse Code equipment at the library.

After the tornado, Berger said, amateur radio operators handled more than 250 requests, both from relatives wanting to know if their loved ones were all right and from residents letting others know their needs.

Still, May said, amateur radio operators are quickly finding ways to blend the two technologies. He demonstrated ways to track a radio’s signals using a map posted on the Internet.

Club members are backing the efforts of the Science Education Awareness Project, an area group that hopes to encourage young people to study science and mathematics.

“Everybody here, in some form or another, has an interest in science and math,” Schweppe said. “Of course, we’re interested in radios, too.”