Jamboree on the Air

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Cq Cq Cq JOTA !!!! That was what you could hear today down at the works QTH the Starcentre at Keighley College.This is where i work im a full time teaching technician in fabrication and welding,also a part time position in the Star Centre which is the college's Science Technology Aeronaughtical Regional Centre (STAR).




This Years JOTA/JOTI event went down great with a fun day for the 50 Scouts that attended the event which was being held world wide over this weekend.

AT the Star centre i was operating from the shack, helping the scouts obtain there Communications Badge.I was part of a team that did a total of 5 activities. The Scouts had to,build a crystal radio,down load a pod cast, jamboree on the internet ,Cool codes and playing radio. My YL Louise M3TLL was delivering cool codes which was Q codes,Phonetics,Call Signs and Pre-fixes etc.She made what a scout leader said was usually boring, fun and interesting.So with the use of PMR radio's and a head full of radio stuff, by the time they came to the H.F Station they had a good understanding of radio and operation.

We were operating on the H.F bands mainly 20m and 40m and worked many other Scout Jamboree Stations from
Cheq Republik,Switzerland,Hungary,Norway,Germany and Italy as well as England.The Scouts also used a YasueVR-5000 Yaesu Scanning Receiver * Frequency Coverage: 100kHz-2599.99MHz * Modes: CW.LSB,USB,AM,AM-N,WAM,FM-N,WFM * Real-Time Spectrum Scope * DSP Bandpass, Notch & Noise Reduction Filters.



This worked well for the Scouts with the winlog Dx cluster running they managed over 150 stations logged in SWL mode.They needed 25 to go towards the Communication Scout badge, so they were hot on the VFO and keen to hunt on the H.F bands and did quite well as we were operating 9am -3pm it worked out that each group got 1 hour in each area so time was short.

I was loose on the ft1000mp working through a carolina windom 160, 0-30m and a cushcraft ma5bmini beam 20-10m.Propagation was good for Europe but i did'nt hear any DX,last year we worked Canada,Brazil and USA.The Scouts were all happy and thrilled with all the activities they'd undertaken and all gaining the radio comminication badge went safely back to there home towns and i pulled the plug and that was another JOTA . Im looking forward to next years JOTA. The next time ill be in the Star Centre should be the middle of November when im training 12 Air Cadets to gain a Foundation licence,the Huddersfield 59th ATC have recently been on a Foundation course and some have obtained a licence. 73s Good DX see you next Weekend on the bands during the World WIDE CQ Contest.

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