10/22/2007 | K5J Fort Worth Area Scouts Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of JOTA with the callsign K5J (5-Decades of JOTA).

This year the Lockheed-Martin Rec. Area Radio Club (W5SJZ) allowed us to use their club station. The Scout leaders consisted of Mark Culross-KD5RXT and John Newman-KA5WAL from Troop 97, Tim Pearson-K5AC and Adrian Britton from Pack 26. We also had help from LMRA-RC member Ken Knudson-N5TY. We operated on Saturday from 8:30am-5:00pm and from 1-5 on Sunday.

We had a 40m SSB station, 20m PSK and 15/17/20m SSB and also VHF HT's.
We had about 25 visitors each day for a total of about 50 scouts, siblings and parents. Each scout was able to make at least one DX contact and at least one other scout contact and many of the scouts had 5+ Q's.

We worked the following countries: England, Slovenia, Germany,
Madagascar, Malta, Netherlands, Bonaire, Curacao, Costa Rica, Turks &
Caicos, Morocco, Bosnia, Serbia, Canary Islands and Australia!

We worked the following states: AL, SC, NC, VA, PA, NJ, NY, CT, NH,
ME, MI, MN, KS, AR, CA, NE, WA, LA, TX, OK, IL, SD.

We worked many other scout stations including: K2J, N2S, K2BSA/4,
K3BSA, KD4BSA, KA9BSA, and lots of other stations located at various
Scout Camps.

The highlight for me was finding an Australian-VK2GWK calling CQ on
20m with a VERY loud signal and having him talk to the kids for 15+
minutes about his QTH. He was telling us about the Koalas in his garden and
about Kangaroos and snakes, he had the kids mesmerized the entire time.

Some of scouts got a demonstration of Morse Code, PSK31, RTTY, several had the opportunity to send their name in Morse Code. They also received lessons on propogation and each kid had to located their QSO's on a US or World Map and mark them with a highlighter (Geography lesson). -- K5AC