11/08/2007 | WA0ONE Troop 462 established camp in the morning of Oct. 20, 2007 near Lacamas Lake in Camas, Washington. The 27 acre camp site is a youth camp called Camp Currie http://www.campcurrie.org/.
It had a lodge on the grounds that we decided to use to setup the station to stay out of the intense rain. The 31 Scouts and 6 adults setup and camped in tents in true scouting fashion however.

We took advantage of a 30 foot flag pole near the lodge and erected a 25 foot mast about 100 ft away from the pole to string up a horizontal trap dipole antenna. The scouts put up the antenna in a steady down pour of rain in a scene that looked like the Iwo Jima flag picture. We operated mostly on the 40m and 20m amateur bands.

We had some radio problems initially with the transmitter and had to swap out to a backup transmitter. We did manage to make several good contacts but not as many as we had hoped due to some problems with the second transmitter as well. Regardless all 31 boys did get an attempt at making contact. Though we were not always successful. By morning we had the primary radio working and attempted a few more contact before breaking camp.

This was the first participation by Troop 462 in the JOTA and most of the boys had never seen HF amateur radio equipment before. The scouts had a good time listening and attempting to converse with folks all around the United States. Many were very interested in the code key and how to send and receive Morse code. Several were able to send there name in a short period of time. A number of boys also indicated a desire to follow up with working on the Radio Merit badge and maybe get licensed themselves. See you next year! 73s WANE portable 7 -- WA0ONE