03/20/2009 | KA6U We had about 13 scouts from Troop 500 in Point Loma participate in the radio merit badge and JOTA at Liberty Station. According to our log sheet, we communicated with 9 other JOTA amateur radio stations in different parts of the United States. We used Peter Van Horne's callsign, KA6U, as our JOTA callsign.

We were portable using a 1 KW generator. Our antenna was a Hy-Gain 14AVQ 40-10 Meter Vertical Antenna with about 20 radials spread out from the base. Our rig was a ICOM 200 watt transceiver and automatic antenna tuner. We had two large tables under a canopy for cover.

We had a successful event. The trek leaders met at 7:00 am to set up the radio station. The station was set up by 7:45 AM and we made our first radio contact by 8:00 am. At 8:00 am a number of Scouts arrived, mostly from the Moose Patrol.

At lunch time, the entire crew deserted KA6U to walk to Subway. They brought KA6U back lunch. While they were gone KA6U had a nice chat with a special Amateur Station celebrating the 75th year of the Coast Guard Auxilary based in Washington State. Larry said that last year he had 75 Scouts at his Ham shack for the Jamboree event.

Throughout the day Iwe helped the Scouts make contacts over Amateur Radio to other Scouts. We had several hours of contacts and I believe every Scout in our Troop and our guests were able to speak to several Scouts. Contacts including stations in Maryland, Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington State.

Our Scouts learned how to operate a radio station safely, use special jargon and use methods to make contacts more efficient, and had an opportunity to share Scouting experience with other Scouts. Our team did a very good job on the Microphone. Radio propagation conditions were not very good today for International communications. We had hoped to connect with Japan or Australia later in the afternoon, but conditions weren't right. We did very well communicating across the U.S., but the radio bands to Asia never opened up today.

We also worked with the Scouts during the day on Radio Merit Badge. The core of Radio Merit Badge is learning how to participate in a radio communications activity. The Scouts today learned about Amateur Radio, how the system works from end-to-end from microphone to transmitter to antenna to ionosphere to receiver and back. Seeing it all work live helped.

We took the station down at 3:30 pm.

The level of participation and cooperation from all of the Scouts was outstanding. Many of the Scouts participated in the event for between 4 and 8 hours.

Our pictures also include the test setup the day before.-- -- KJ6VX