States contacted:

Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico

Countries contacted:

Canada (Newfoundland), Canary Islands, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, United States

We enjoyed the Second Annual Piedmont Council, Two Rivers District Jamboree on the Air Station, “K4G” on 15 October 2011. The event ran from 9:00 am to 4 pm EDT and was held at the C.C. Kimbrell Scout Service Center, which is the Headquarters for the Piedmont Council in North Carolina, located at 1222 E. Franklin Blvd., in Gastonia, North Carolina. The event was sponsored by the Gaston County Amateur Radio Society (GCARS) and was supported by ten radio amateurs from the club throughout the day. We also had on hand Cameron Hasson, a WEBELOS scout, who is also the youngest extra class ham we believe, in the Southeast United States (10 years old). Kevin Huffman, our District Scout Executive made sure we had full support from the Piedmont Council.

It was advertised as a “drop in” event and as such, individual scouts and groups from scout units came by to operate on both HF and VHF/DSTAR. We had a 20m/15m/10m tri-band beam to work HF SSB on an ICOM 706 mkIIG and an ICOM DSTAR rig running both DSTAR and FM on the local repeaters on 2 meters. Coincidently, within a mile of our station, there was a JOTA station at the Pioneer Girl Scout office, also located in Gastonia (we did work them).

The event was casual, with scouts moving between the information table (where they learned about radio theory, Morse code, digital modes and ham radio) and the VHF/DSTAR radio table, and the HF radio table. DSTAR activity was a bit of a pile up, as many stations attempted to talk at the same time. It was great to see the smiles on the faces of the scouts as they spoke with other boy and girl scouts all over the nation and the world. Scouts talked about their favorite colors, their scouting goals and achievements and their pets, to name a few things. We spoke English, mainly, but did have an opportunity to practice French, Spanish, Portuguese and even German (the Canary Island station was run by a retired German national who spoke 4 languages)! A number of times, we “lined 'em up” and had 8 or 10 scouts in Gastonia talk to 8 or 10 scouts in distant locales. It was truly an opportunity to spread national and international good will. Lord Baden Powell would have to smile. In addition, scouts were encouraged to continue the jamboree experience by logging onto the internet and doing JOTI at home. We ran out of JOTA patches and scouts were encouraged to call the international scout section at the national office to get more. Inasmuch as the weather was perfect, and everyone left smiling, we truly were blessed by God to have such a fine event in Gastonia.