Success Stories
We hope to provide you insight into the program possibilities with JOTA success stories. Our first one is from the 2009 Jamboree-on-the-Air Extravaganza held at the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas. You can see it at the following link:
www.scouting.org/jamboree/sitecore/content/home/international/programenrichment/jota_joti.aspx.
The next story is from the Central New Jersey Council and was written by Gary Wilson, K2GW.
The Delaware Valley Radio Association has a long history of opening its club station or setting up portable operations to introduce Scouts to amateur radio through the annual Jamboree-on-the-Air. This year a unique opportunity existed in that JOTA weekend would see the entire Central New Jersey Council holding a councilwide camporee nearby. This means that 2,200 Scouts would be camping in the same area we’ve used for Field Day the past three years. A significant portable operation was obviously inevitable!
The camporee featured a “Merit Badge Midway” with booths highlighting various merit badges and offering opportunities to complete one or two requirements for them. The midway was to be located in the unused skating rink. We knew from past experience that this area is one big echo chamber. Thus we decided to set up an information booth there with hands-on exhibits and a VHF/UHF/EchoLink station, but also set up two HF stations in tents just outside the rink entrance where things would be quieter.
We decided on three stations because of the number of Scouts attending. We didn’t want to have more than two Scouts waiting because if one talks for five minutes, the others are just watching for 15 minutes and that exceeds their attention span. Also, the kids get just as much kick out of talking 30 miles as 3,000. JOTA weekend can get crowded on HF, so a VHF/UHF/EchoLink station with club members standing by to talk to them provided a good backup.
An effort of this size requires planning and division of responsibilities. The club’s three Radio merit badge counselors were the initial core. Alex Flinsch, AB2RC, is our JOTA coordinator and took on the task of setting up his tent and the primary HF station. Don Wright, AA2F (the ARRL Instructor of the Year) set up the Radio merit badge information exhibit inside the rink. Gary Wilson, K2GW, took on the paperwork aspects (liaison with the council, JOTA participation and QSL cards, securing K2BSA/2, etc.), and provided the portable HF antennas and the second HF station.
Since the operation was similar to our field day operations, two of the club’s logistics experts were named to the committee. Dave Martin, W0SNJ, provided the VHF/UHF/EchoLink Station at the inside exhibit and handled power distribution. Steve Huston, W2SRH, coordinated the tentage and operated the second station when needed. In addition, Christian Ingerslev, AB2SN, was helping to run the orienteering event on the other side of the park. He used his HT from there to provide contacts for the boys using VHF.
Planning was done with weekly nets on the W2ZQ repeater. This allowed us to keep each other in synch without spending a lot of time in meetings.
A requirement for using K2BSA/2 is that you have to answer all QSL requests. Commemorative QSLs for K2BSA/2 were printed using WB8RCR’s free QSLMaker software. It’s invaluable for creating small runs of custom QSL cards.
We also made up our own JOTA participation cards for the boys. Ours had space on the back for logging the details of their contact. This became a Radio merit badge partial completion form for requirements 7a(2) and 8. Telling the boys that they get to complete some merit badge requirements was a big draw.
We arrived at 7 a.m. to be ready for the 9 a.m. opening of the midway. Everything was up and running by 8:30 a.m. The weather was cool and very windy, but the Buddipole at 16 feet for 20 meters and the inverted V’s on a DK9SQ mast for 80 and 40 meters stayed up without incident. Our antennas were chosen for reliable US English language rag chews and not weak DX exchange of signal reports. The NVIS inverted V’s did a great job of turning 40-meter, 1,000-mile SSB contacts into armchair copy for the Scouts. About noon, the 20-knot wind broke the tent frame at the back-up HF station, but we quickly relocated that equipment to the other half of the primary station tent and continued operation.
About 100 Scouts made leisurely on-the-air contacts during the seven hours. We talked to 31 unique stations in 40 separate QSOs. These included four Scout camps, 10 states, and three countries on 40 meters, 20 meters, 2 meters, and a 440 RF link to EchoLink.
About 200 other Scouts took literature on licensing and the upcoming Radio merit badge day that we will be hosting with our sister club, the David Sarnoff Radio Club, on January 8.
The Merit Badge Midway closed at 4 p.m., and we were all packed up by 5 p.m. Now it’s on to Radio Merit Badge Day in January!
73 and thanks to all who helped!
Gary, K2GW