10/24/2015 | K2USA

The Ocean Monmouth Amateur Radio Club (OMARC), which is part of the The Information Age Learning Center  in Wall Township, New Jersey opened its doors over weekend of October 15 and 16 to host approximately 50 scouts of all ranks from Tiger to Boy Scout and about 20 leaders as part of the annual Jamboree On The Air (JOTA) event that gets scouts on the radio waves talking to other scouts. 

The scouts and leaders learned about the rich history of the facility including critical earth-moon-earth communications led by the U.S. Army in the 1940’s and some of the recent restoration activities to bring some of the equipment and functionality back to life.  The visitors had a chance to get a quick introduction to Amateur Radio and some basic operational information before being handed a microphone, under the leadership of licensed operators,  and offered a chance to chat with scouts in several states here in the US or across the globe.  One of the highlights were some crystal clear communications with other JOTA stations in Italy, France, and the United Kingdom.  The scouts had some great conversations with other scouts in those countries and made new some friends, learned about scouting in those countries, and plans to chat again at the next JOTA event!

  Braving some cold temperatures, some of the scouts and their leaders spent the night within the OMARC grounds and were able to enjoy some communications early the next day before heading on off to explore some of the historical artifacts at the InfoAge Museum.  In addition, some of the scouts that visited the facility spent some time to complete their Radio merit badge requirements and learned about the process to become a licensed operator.  In addition, the club finalized some plans to host amateur radio demonstrations as several upcoming pack and troop meetings.   The OMARC organization is already planning for next year’s event and expects to make it bigger and even better.  If your leaders or scouts wish to learn more about Amateur Radio, you can contact us at jota@n2mo.org and we’d be happy to have your scout group visit us or perhaps even schedule a Radio merit badge class, some amateur radio training classes, and testing to allow individuals to operate stations on their own as an FCC licensed professional.

For more information about OMARC, please visit http://n2mo.org/, for InfoAge - http://infoage.org/, and for JOTA, http://www.scouting.org/jota.aspx.

 

 

 

-- W2RWJ