Members from the Davie County Amateur Radio Club, DCARC, worked with the Scouts of the Old North State Council to host a JOTA station at the Uwharrie district’s fall camporee.  The camporee was held at Camp Woodfield near Asheboro North Carolina on Saturday, October 16, 2010.  This year’s Camporee theme was “Jamboree from the Past” and was a reenactment of a 1932 jamboree.  

The day started out early at 05:30 EST as breakfast had to be cooked over an open fire in keeping with the rules of the camporee.  Scouts had spent the night in old style “pup” tents that they constructed themselves.   Flag ceremony was promptly at 08:00 EST.  After a brief clean up period scouts began visiting one of 8 different activity stations.

Early morning began with a simple configuration including Charles’, KI4NCQ, Alinco DJ-V5 HT with Arrow II antenna.   Bob, N2DMC arrived with the DCARC’s Icom 706 and shortly after that Blue, KD4GCF, also arrived with his packet/APRS station.  Blue’s old Toshiba Satellite laptop ran the DOS version of APRS.  I believe that the DOS OS kept with the camporee’s theme of Jamboree 1932!   Once we had enough help to manage our 200+ foot all band G5RV we used an air cannon based on plans printed in QST to launch the wire high into the trees.  KD4GCF launched his coat hanger ground plane antenna on to the roof of our operations shelter to put his packet/APRS station on the air.  Charles had brought a Kenwood TM-271 and with a coax feed line borrowed from Bob and a J-pole antenna supplied by Blue we had it on the air in short order.

Our station’s activity began around 08:30 EST where Charles taught an introduction to Amateur radio class.  Charles also attempted to work satellite as the occasional low earth orbit satellite would make a local pass.  While Bob manned the Icom 706 getting the scouts on HF, Blue demonstrated the APRS software and pitched in to help with the class.  Life Scout Douglas Brown, KJ4LTE, manned the TM-271 and kept a steady stream of scouts chattering away mostly with the 2 meter repeater, K4ITL -147.255, located at Level Cross NC. 

We recorded only a fraction of the contacts made as our emphasis was to get scouts talking on the radio.  We record contacts as far north as Maine and as far west as Arizona.  We recorded several contacts in Europe including one as far as Italy.  One of the most memorable contacts was a 2 meter QSO where another life scout was asked if he was enjoying the camporee to which he replied this is the most fun camporee I have ever attended.  He cited the radio and Morse code stations as examples of why he liked this camporee the best.   The most challenging contact came after a full day of failed attempts to make a Satellite contact. The last pass of our day for Satellite AO-51 arrived at 17:35 EST.  The team sprang into action as second class scout Karl Kassel manned the laptop running HRD’s satellite tracking software shouting out position reports, while tenderfoot Scout Mason Hawkins tracked the satellite with the Arrow II antenna.  Charles operated the Alinco DJ-V5 HT on the down link constantly adjusting the frequency to compensate for the Doppler affect.  Unfortunately, we were unable to compete with other high power stations working the satellite with our HT’s 5 watts.  So after some quick setups on the TM-571 Douglas, KJ4LTE, was able to make contact just as AO-51 slipped over the horizon.  In the excitement of celebrating a successful contact we realized nobody had recorded the contact’s call sign!

In all we had about 70 scouts stop by our JOTA station with about 30 scouts actually got to talk on the radio.  Most scouts were interested but too afraid to step up to the microphone.  However, many scouts and leaders requested information about earning a license for themselves.  The hook was set and after all that was our main goal for this event.  As the day came to an end we began discussing plans for next year’s JOTA event.