10/20/2008 | WE6BSA This was our 5th annual participation in Jamboree on the Air and our biggest one yet. There seemed to be more people on the air this year as well. We had over 150 Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Venturers, Girl Scouts, parents and siblings come through our temporary home at the West Los Angeles County Council's Crescent Bay District's Westside Service Center where we had setup for this event and operated on Sunday October 19, 2008 from 12 - 5pm PT. This year we also had received the club call of WE6BSA to operate under.

We had lots of Ham equipment for the participants to try out. This included: 6 Radios, one computer running echolink, morse code key and morse code reader, antenna strung up trees (a neat sling shot to get the antenna up), maps, band charts, and much, much, more. Innovation and imagination was key. We even had a kayak that was used as a counter weight for an antenna system.

From tiger cubs that are normally loud who started out with barely whispering into the microphone as they called CQ Jamboree to seasoned veterans we had such fascination by all as we reached Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, South Carolina, Brazil, Canada, Australia and many more fun and exciting places. We had a testing session for those that wanted to get their own FCC License (We had one at the previous roundtable as well) and we had Merit Badge counselors that for those that wanted to earn the radio merit badge. We had scout participation from four of our boy scout districts and two girl scout councils.

Of course we could not have done it without the generous support of numerous organizations and volunteers including the WLACC Council, the crescent Bay District, The Crescent Bay District Committee, The PAPA Repeater System , The Greater Los Angeles Amateur Radio Group FCC Testing Group, Troop and Pack 360, Al Sakkai, Andrew Sisolak, Lisa Alexander, Bob Clinco, John Haight, Norm Goodkin K6YXH, Cliff Cheng AC6C, Robert Sussin WK6W, Uriel Sigala KE6GXT, Tzippora Weinberg N6TFW, Chaim Weinberg KI6RDV, and Sanford Weinberg AE6WV

To watch an adult teach a scout about radio and that first nervous contact over the air... to then watch him become more comfortable and then teach the same things to an eager cub scout like he was a pro... and then watch that cub share with the next cub shows us all what this is all about. -- AE6WV