JOTA-JOTI 2022 emblem

Once again, the club hosted Scouts and Guides taking part in this year’s International Jamboree on the Air. A group of 62 scouts visited from a nearby school where they were camping; numbers were well down from previous years, so we cut back activities from the full weekend to just Saturday. We expect the numbers will be back to normal next year.

Weather was perfect: the recent rains eased up during the week, and Saturday was a nice warm Sydney Spring day. The kids arrived in “waves” and took turns at each of the activities we arranged, to introduce them to various aspects of Amateur Radio

We ran a number of activities on the day:

  • building and operating a portable VHF station
  • introduction to the ionosphere, and operating on HF
  • playing “Battleships” on the air
  • learning Morse code
  • a simple code breaking game, based on the Escape Team smartphone app
  • introduction to the oscilloscope

The HF bands weren’t playing nice unfortunately, with high noise levels across several bands early in the day. We did manage to contact other groups in VK1 (ACT), VK4 (QLD) and VK7 (TAS).

The kids all enjoyed the day, and hopefully some of them will return and take up Amateur Radio as a hobby in the future.

In between waves of Scouts we feasted on Stonehenge pizza (thanks Steve – excellent as always!)

The day wrapped up about 3pm.

Below are a few photos we managed to take while running the activities (thanks to VK2AID, VK2SKY, and VK2VKP); we have a little bit of video too.

Code breakers in the foreground, setting up for Battleships in the background
Learning about the Oscilloscope
The girls proved to be code breaking wizards…
Des VK2TGJ guiding the Scouts in setting up a portable station

Raising the mast… shades of Iwo Jima 🙂
Des VK2TGJ introducing the station components: radio, PSU, SWR meter, cables
Sajith VK2AID with Scouts at one end of the on-air Battleships activity

Phil VK2BDF guiding the Battleships activity later in the day

Dom VK2JNA introduced the ionosphere and operating on HF
One of the members at home QTH answering a call from the newly built JOTA station

Thanks to all the club members who played a part in making JOTA 2022 a success:

  • VK2AID Sajith
  • VK2BDF Phil
  • VK2EAH Andy
  • VK2JNA Dom
  • VK2MZ Rob
  • VK2MZZ Jeff
  • VK2SKY Richard
  • VK2TGJ Des
  • VK2THT Sean
  • VK2VKP Rajesh
  • VK2ZZM Rod

(Did we miss anyone in the list above? Please me know!)