Jamboree on the Air 2012

Frontenac Radio Group will be hosting Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts from the Perth and Ottawa area on Saturday, October 20 and Sunday, October 21, at Whispering Pines Scout Camp, starting at about 0900L.

Call sign in use for the weekend will be VE3SIQ. 

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts all over the world will be participating in the Jamboree on the Air.

Look for the Scouts on SSB (phone)
80 m 3.690 & 3.940 MHz
40 m 7.090 & 7.190 MHz
20 m 14.290 MHz
17 m 18.140 MHz
15 m 21.360 MHz
12 m 24.960 MHz
10 m 28.390 MHz
6 m 50.160 MHz

This is a great opportunity to showcase ham radio to our younger generation, so if you hear a station calling "CQ JOTA" give them a shout!

JOTA - 2011

It's that time of year, the annual Jamboree on the Air, sponsored by the World Organization of the Scout Movement.  This is the 54th year that JOTA has been held, always on the third weekend of October.

This weekend I'm off with Frontenac County ARES Group to Whispering Pines Scout Camp in support of the Valley Highlands District JOTA Camp.  This is the second year we have done this, and while the weather forecast is for rain, it will still be a fun weekend.

Last year I blogged about this event and complained about the fact that RAC did not seem to support this event.  In fact the Ontario ARES organization actually scheduled their annual SET on that date, which stopped ARES groups from giving a helping hand to local Scout groups.

Why would you miss out on an opportunity to showcase our hobby to thousands of Canadian youth? 

So, here we are twelve months later, and guess what?  Ontario ARES has once again scheduled their annual SET for this weekend - Saturday, the 15th to be precise.  Once again I complained to the Ontario Section Manager, the senior ARES member in Ontario, Allan Boyd, and once again was given a pile of "waffle"......including the beaut of a line that the choice of the date is not up to him............jeez Allan, you're the boss, you're the guy in charge, how 'bout making a command decision for once and change the SET date!! 

You would think that after 54 years of an event being held on the same weekend, RAC just might have been able to get its collective head out of its ass and get its crap together on it......but apparently not.  RAC has not even issued a bulletin on the event, that's how high youth involvement in our hobby is to this current executive. 

The World Scout Bureau reported that the 2010 JOTA had just over 700,000 Scout participants from nearly 6000 amateur radio stations.   

Oh, and did I mention that the theme of this years JOTA is "Peace, Environment and Natural Disasters", and did I also mention that this years JOTA actually has an emergency communications exercise built into it?  Kind of ironic isn't it?

Here's what IARU Region 1 secretary, Denis ZS4BS has to say about this years JOTA: 

"Within this year's JOTA, an emergency communications exercise will take place on Saturday, 15 October, 2011 in the afternoon (European time zone). This simulated emergency test will include the Headquarters station, HB9S, of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), which will be operated by hams from 5 different countries. WOSM has now published the details for the event on its web site with numerous links to related documents of IARU and other sources.

This year's JOTA theme offers an excellent opportunity to raise the awareness for the role of the Amateur Radio Service in disaster situations."

So just where is the RAC Field Service in all this? Where are the individuals who run the RAC Youth Education Program?  Why, nowhere to be found it seems.  There's nothing on the RAC website about this event, not a whisper. 

So once again I ask why would you miss out on an opportunity to showcase our hobby to thousands of Canadian youth?

Am I surprised?  Nope, not at all.  This is typical of the RAC.  They have bleated on for a number of years about falling membership, and the lack of youth involvement, but what are they doing about it?  Apparently nothing!

Will the last RAC member please turn out the light!

JOTA 2010

Friday afternoon saw Dave-VE3DZE, George-VE3SIQ, and myself head north on Hwy 15 to the Whispering Pines Scout Camp, on Otty Lake, to set up their Jamboree on the Air stations.
It was pouring rain with winds 30 kph gusting to 60 kph when we arrived, and that situation didn't change until well after midnight.  It was, as they write...."A dark and stormy night..."

This was the first time we had done the JOTA from the Whispering Pines Scout Camp, so it was all new terrain for us.  The camp is a beautiful spot, all wilderness, and no buildings allowed there at all.  In fact once you are there you would not guess for a moment that you are actually only 6 Km south of the Town of Perth.  The camp has many large trees....all waiting to be strung with dipole antennas, and it is also very well looked after by their Camp Warden - Stan.

The JOTA Campsite

Friday evening saw us simply set up our camp and the screen tents we were to operate from.  It's a good job we brought as many large tarps as we did, because we used them all to keep everything dry.

After we finished setting up we drove into Perth and had supper at Michael's restaurant.  The food there was excellent.  It was also a great opportunity for us to take our time and dry out.

We used wire dipoles for 80m and 20m, and the Buddipole for 40m and 6m dipole.  All the antennas worked exceptionally well, and even though they were not that high off the ground, we did get a fair bit of DX from them.

Saturday morning came and the rain had given way to a beautiful blue sky, and the winds dropped to nothing around noon.  One of the Scout leaders lent us his 5000Kw generator, which was a stroke of good luck as I doubt our batteries would have lasted as long as we ended up needing them.

Dave-VE3DZE hard at work

Dave-VE3DZE and I shared one screen tent to operate from.  It wasn't that bad as we used our field day coax notch filter set, and that took out any interference we would have had being so close.  Dave made some good contacts on 20m during the day, but while we had hoped to work some European stations doing JOTA, we never heard any at all, and none responded to our CQ's.

For most of the day we stayed put on 7.169 and worked N2Y, who was working the JOTA from a scout camp near Constantia, NY.  It was interesting to listen to the American scouts describe their scouting system to our Canadian scouts.  Of course it was the fact that Canada has Coed scout troops, with real live girls, these days that really peaked the American scout's attention!

George VE3SIQ.....surrounded

George-VE3SIQ worked the 80m band for most of the day.  There were only a few signals on 80m, so a few of the net controllers for the ONTARS net on 3.755 helped us out by talking to the scouts. Thanks for doing that guys, you really brought big smiles to the faces of dozens of kids!

I managed to work a good number of stations on 40m, but it wasn't until late in the afternoon that I discovered that the power had been turned down to 10w all day!  Of course, before I discovered that I was operating QRP, I worked DR1A and DR1L, both in Germany.  Not too bad for QRP into a Buddipole dipole at 18 feet off the ground.

JOTA is an excellent method of introducing young people to our hobby.  We had several of the scouts hang around the radios all day.  In fact one young lad, Alex, was so interested in ham radio I sat him down and allowed him to work a few contest stations, under his own steam (and my supervision), during the NY QSO Party that was also going on that day.  The kid is a natural!  Larry Palmer-VE3LFP, who is a scout leader in that area is going to try and find the young fella a local Elmer so he can continue with the hobby.

JOTA and ARES are a natural fit.  It provides a good scenario that allows ARES to deploy to the field and set up and operate under realistic conditions.  It also gives excellent exposure of our great hobby to the youth of this country, which we all know we sorely need given the age of most of us "Olde Farts". 

So, given this natural fit of JOTA and ARES, one must ask why the RAC Field Service decided to hold the Canadian National ARES SET on the same weekend?  And while we're on this subject, why was there not a RAC Bulletin issued to advise hams of the fact that JOTA was taking place.  At least then we could have possibly had more hams on the air for the youth to talk to.

Once again, RAC proves to us all that they are not paying attention on how to attract younger hams....or do they really care about attracting youth members?  JOTA happens every year guys....on the same weekend in October....and has done for 53 years. 

The hams from Kingston provided operators for two JOTA scout camps, for about 300 youth combined between the two, and Bill-VE3CRU, operating from Mossport Raceway, had 300 scouts at that location go through his portable shack alone last weekend! 

How many more youth across the country could have had good exposure to the hobby if our ARES groups were not tied up with an ineffectual exercise?  RAC wasted a wonderful opportunity last weekend to showcase our ham radio hobby to the youth of this country.  ARES exercises can be held any weekend of the year, but there's only one JOTA per year. 

So please RAC executive and directors, don't cry to us about the lack of youth in our hobby.  We're trying our best to get them interested, but once again you greatly let us down!