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Monty

July 28, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Germany – July 2019

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After YOTA ZS, there were two events on our more or less immediate TODO list—December YOTA Month and the subregional camp, planned for March.

However, before that, there was another youth event in Germany: Carsten, DM9EE, opened his contest station for youngsters to operate during CQWW SSB, as part of YOTA’s Youth Contesting Program. Six youngsters from three countries, some of which have never met before, manned the Multi-Two station for the full 48h of the contest. For those that want to take the chance as well, this year YCP will stop by DP9A during CQWW SSB, and motivated young operators are always sought after!

This year’s callsign for December YOTA Month in Germany was DF0YOTA. Like last year, the callsign was used by youngsters all over Germany, totalling 4453 QSOs. For this year, we hope that we can get both more youngsters on the air as well as more QSOs into the log. Ideally we can get some big station(s) opening their doors for youngsters, but whether we can arrange that remains to be seen.

By far the biggest event though was the subregional camp, taking place in Baunatal in central Germany in March. It took place right next to the DARC headquarters, in DARC’s “amateur radio center”, which consists of a radio station as well as several conference rooms, perfectly suited for format of event that we ran. For this so-called BarCamp, the participants themselves held the workshops. This relieved us from having to acquire workshops, and also fostered contact between the youngsters, most of which have never seen each other before, and also often are the only youngsters as their local club. With over 50 participants from four different countries the camp was a resounding success.

Of the participants at the camp, many met each other again at several events: DARC’s FUNK.TAG in Kassel, the Fichtenfieldday (a field day event mostly targeted at youngsters, which had a lot more actual youngsters this year), as well as the Ham Camp during Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen. Some of the participants also got their license (or upgraded) since the subregional event. However, we do seem to have troubles motivating our youngsters to go to the summer camp in Bulgaria, with only three applicants. Part of this might have do to with summer holidays in Germany (which differ from state to state and are notoriously incompatible with most of Europe), but considering how many youngsters were at the subregional camps (and how many more there are within Germany), that is a disappointingly low interest. We’re happy about any ideas from other countries on how to tackle this issue.

July 28, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Slovakia – July 2019

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With warm weather, Radioclub OM3Kii involves youngsters in VHF/MW contesting more often. VHF Activity contest every month is a perfect opportunity to get kids behind mike, even the youngest ones.

In big contests, we are active on bands from 144 MHz up to 10 GHz that means 5 operating positions and lot of “time slots”. Young members get more and more chances to operate on 144 MHz and 432 MHz. It’s the best investment for the club with minimal affect to results as they are supervised and some are already as good as the older OPs. Without new blood we would easily had a lack of operators to cover all bands.

June 29, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Czech Republic – May 2019

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Czech Republic Championship of Children and Youth in Radio Engineering

Recently in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm Czech Radio Club organised Championship in Radio Engineering. During the weekend, from 10.5 to 12.5.2019, had to 28 participants from all Czech Republic show their skills in Radio-Amateur Sport. Participants were separated into three categories: younger pupils (under 12 years old), older pupils (13-16 years old) and youth (17-19 years old). They competed in three disciplines: pass an expert test, make a competition product in time and introduce their own product.

After completing the last part of the competition, the participants went on a trip to Pustevny. That was the time to evaluate.

The prize was awarded to 9 participants from all categories

See more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QoUTBAfK0A

Jan contesting from his student dormitory

Honza OK1JD took part in 1st subregional VHF contest and few local FM 145/432 MHz contests. He took his handheld and J-pole made on YOTA Austria, sat into the window of the highest floor of the college dormitories and whistled CW by his mouth into the microphone in his FT-60 (modulated CW is granted with more points in those contests). It was very funny to call the CQ-ing station and ask her (verbally), if she knows CW and if we could make QSO this „whistled way“. Surprisingly 2/3 of stations were so enthusiastic as him, so quite a lot of contacts was made.

Unfortunately, instead of what was mentioned above, there was a group of very unhappy people. Those were the inhabitants of highest accomodations near the window, where he sat during the FM contests. Surprisingly nobody from them was interested in this loud activity, which disturbed students from studying. Yes, no doubt with that, they had a good point. Bud highest window in the highest floor, is a highest window in a highest floor, HI. Where else should the VHF operator deny his attention, HI!!!

Our Future plans?

Maker Faire 22.6 -23.6.

During these days there will be fair for hobby doers in field of RC models, electronic enthusiasts, hobby scientists etc. The Czech Radio Club will have the stand there. We will be showing SSTV via satellite repeater, man will take a picture of himself and we will send it to the repeater using one radio. They will be able to see how the picture is being received on another radio on the other side of our stand.

June 9, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Finland – May 2019

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After the last Train The Trainer report we have done a lot for the ham radio youth – main focus on the camp Nordics On The air. The camp was held 19.-22.4.2019 in Leirisalo in Southern Finland. With the help of a total of 14 organizers we made it possible for 32 international youngsters to have an amazing time creating networks across borders while participating in amateur radio related activities. You can read more about the camp from the news here at ham-yota.com.

 

A lot of the Finnish Youth team’s time this year has been used for planning NOTA, but we have also remembered the coming summer and autumn. We will have a pre-planned youth meet in SRAL’s summer camp and the traditional Polar camp for Finnish youngsters will be re-organized in October. Not to forget the annual DYM operating weekend in December. We also have a great team of three participating in this year’s YOTA in Bulgaria.

 

Our problems in getting new youth into amateur radio are still the same as before. Finding time for the hobby and networking as the main ones. The brand of the hobby needs a facelift, since it is seen as weird and “nerdish”. We feel that Train The Trainer is a good initiative to face the problems together.

 

We still don’t get any information about newly licenced youth, but we do know that at least a couple very young radio scouts have recently gotten their licenses and they have been integrated to SRAL’s youth.

 

Our official social media pages are NOTA’s (Nordics on the air) Instagram @nordicsontheair and our new Nordics On The Air Facebook page which will be updated frequently. On top of that we have WhatsApp group chats for Finnish youngsters and our Youth team and Telegram groups for both Nordic co-operation and NOTA 2019.

May 20, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Lithuania – May 2019

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LITHUANIAN – LY YOTA TEAM

Train the Trainer report

14 February 2019

ACTIVITIES SINCE 14th OF February 2019

  • ●  Lukas LY1LB and Haroldas LY5IM visited Vilnius Radvilų gymnasium and spoke about the activities of ham radio and how to become a radio amateur. Presentation about YOTA activities was also made, alongside the project of ARISS contact. The students had a hands on experience with a HF radio which was set up in the classroom. Photos can be found on Lithuanian amateur radio society facebook page. [1].
  • ●  Vilnius University club is continuing to grow. As of last month we have a new club member – Lukas LY1PG. The club will begin more HF operations as a new antenna was obtained – we have bought a new 3 element tri-bander yagi for 20/15/10m.
  • ●  An animated video about Amateur Radio hobby was released in Lithuanian on one of the most known educational channels in Lithuania [2].
  • ●  Amateur Radio Direction Finding has been regularly cultivated with at least one activity a week, every month. All of these ARDF meetings/trainings have been public and announced to a wide audience, frequently bringing new people who might eventually get in the hobby themselves.
  • ●  Simonas Kareiva has presented the amateur radio hobby to a large audience on prime-time evening hours of a major radio station “Radiocentras”
  • ●  The high-altitude balloon project, Amateur Radio manual are currently pending as per high work and study load to the participants.

    PLANS FOR NEXT 2 MONTHS

  1. Continue working with new interested people;
  2. Further work towards LY high altitude amateur radio balloon experiment;
  3. ARDF activities. [3]

LONG-TERM PLANS

  1. Amateur Radio manual site to make it international guide to amateur radio;
  2. Lithuanian amateur radio society youth committee expansion, participation in

    amateur radio related activities – the yearly meeting will take place this March,

    suggestion for youth committee have been already proposed;

  3. Design of memorable apparel and stickers to give exposure to amateur radio and

    the hobbyists themselves;

  4. Connecting Lithuanian amateur clubs into one single network: having

    synchronised calendar of upcoming activities, creating a discussion thread online, hosting all-club summit;

LINKS:

   1. https://www.facebook.com/lrmd.lt/posts/1218873044935252
   2. https://youtu.be/sUPingqsPco
   3. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ly.ardf/
May 20, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Team South Africa – May 2019

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The South African Radio League (SARL) report:

On the evening of 17 April, Höerskool Jeugland, a dual medium school in Kempton Park held their annual open day, where prospective grade 8’s come and see what the school has to offer.

 

On show was the Jeugland Radio club ZR6JRC. Licensed amateurs Cameron (ZS6CYE), Maryna (ZR6MC), Josh (ZU6JOS), Nadia (ZU6NAC) and RAE candidate Waldo took time to explain to the prospective Jeugies what amateur radio is all about and how to join the club and begin having fun.

The catch phrase ‘Your Gateway to a  Career in Engineering and Science’  really seemed to catch the eye and there was a lot of interest.

Pictures of the event can be seen on the SARL site at
http://www.sarl.org.za/

May 20, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – The Netherlands – May 2019

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Train the trainer – May 2019

This year, we have promoted Kids Day. An article was written in the club magazine Electron, edition of January.

From 15 to 17 March, a sub-regional camp was organized in Germany.

4 people from the Netherlands were present at this event. The visit of this camp is also summarized in an article for the club magazine Electron.

Also the sub-regional camp NOTA was visited by 1 Dutch member.

This year we will promote and try to participate to several activities, such as:

  • YOTA Bulgaria 2019
  • December YOTA month
  • Winter YOTA the Netherlands (12-12 / 15-12)
  • YCP (Youth Contest Program)

Another important activity this year is to meet youngsters and other people at the HAM radio convention 2019 (https://dvdra.veron.nl/).

On November 2nd, 2019, the 59th Ham Radio Convention will take place in The Netherlands. Organiser is VERON, the Dutch radio society. We have a youngsters place.

At last we are present at the JOTA/JOTI.

Every third (full) weekend of October a global JOTA/JOTI event take place.

May 20, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Germany – May 2019

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The YOTA Subregional Camp in DL finally took place! In Mid of March 60 Youngsters met and spent a great weekend  together. A daily report can be found on the website, see  https://www.ham-yota.com/category/subregional-activities/ . This report will focus on our notes and organizing ideas behind the camp. It was mainly organizied by some former YOTA-Camp participants and voluntary youth workers of the DARC

Since we (the organisors) also wanted to include the international character of ham radio, we apply for a Subregional YOTA Camp and therefore also invited international youngsters. To not scare away German youngsters (e.g. younger ones), who might be afraid of a camp held in English, we decided to keep German as the main language, but with the opportunity to also have all program points in English, at least with an interpretor.

The amount of pupil youngsters in DL is quite high, so had to find a suitable date for them. School holidays aren’t harmonised, depending on where you live, you can have different holiday dates than others. Therefore the camp was just hold on one weekend.

The place for the camp should be the headquarter of the DARC in Baunatal, the accomodation was the Hotel owned by the DARC (we still had to pay for it, but we did get a discount). Due to the most capacity for everyone in the Hotel in Baunatal, the best suitable date was mid of March.

For advertising the event, we used several platforms: This includes promoting the camp on the DARC website, post on the social media accounts of the DARC and YOTA as well as reposting it, writing a general email to all young DARC members, advertising in the CQDL magazine (German ham radio magazine) and also directly contacting youngsters. It actually worked well since the camp was completely full and we also got a high number of participants from Germany itself.
Since we didn‘t like the idea of first come first serve, we decided to first went for a conditional registration, with a final acceptance of participants after the deadline. The idea behind that was mainly to avoid to many big youth groups from e.g. the same local club (since this tend to block a good get-to-know-each-other with everyone). We didn‘t had this szenario, but we had a few to many youngsters so we just used lottery to make a decision who get accepted.

For the programme we just followed two simple ideas: one was to have informative parts, the other was to get youngsters with same interests together. We therefore came to the following schedule:

Friday (at Hotel)

  • arrival until afternoon
  • welcoming and YOTA presentation
  • round of introductions (every participant)
  • dinner and intercultural evening

Saturday

  • breakfast (at Hotel)
  • drive to DARC Headquarter and short welcoming
  • seperating into three groups; each group attended three events: CQDL magazine editorial department / QSL bureau /  general information about DARC Headquarter
  • lunch at Headquarter, afterwards walk to DARC radio centre
  • introduction of workshops (see below) and workshops
  • dinner, afterwards continuing workshops
  • drive to Hotel

Sunday

  • breakfast (at Hotel) and drive to DARC radio centre
  • workshops
  • lunch, closing ceremony and goodbye

Each participant should decide on his/her own which workshops he/she wanted to attend. If there was a free time slot, everyone was invited to go to the shack. At any time there was a advisor in the shack, so that also unexperienced youngsters could go there. Another possibility during a free time slot was to go to one of the chill out areas. The idea behind this was that while realxing in on of the beanbags, you can easily talk and get in contact with another youngster next to you. It turned at that this worked pretty well, at the end of the camp everyone has spoken to nearly all other participants and therefore got to know a lot of other hams around his age.

Some workshops where held (spontaniously) several times, since collasions were unaviodable. The workshops were held by the participants themselves. The advantage behind this is to give the more experienced youngsters the opportunity to show their knowledge and on the other hand side to give the others the opportunity to learn from other youngsters, following the motto „youngsters for youngsters“.

Time flew by and soon the camp was over again. However, many have already said to take part in another amateur radio event. We hope and look forward to seeing more youngsters at such events soon.

Anyone is more than welcome to share any comments or questions with us! If you want to contact us directly, feel free to contact us also via ham-yota@darc.de

73, the organizing team

May 20, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Sweden – May 2019

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Swedish team report ”After YOTA 2018”

What have we done since last report?


NOTA 2019

NOTA, Nordics On The Air, a local IARU R1:s youth camp. In 2018, the first NOTA camp where held in on Hemsön, a small Island in Sweden, something that now have continued on into a larger cooperation between even more countries.

This year the Finnish team was the main organiser of this event, and boy what a fantastic work hey had done! For us in the Swedish team, this camp stared with roadtrips to the ferry over from Stockholm to Turku, with a second roadtripp to the campsite. We did arrive a bit earlier then the others, so we helped our fellow Nordics with the station and antennas.

When all the other participants had arrived to the camp, we had some teambuilding activities and finished the day with an intercultural evening, just like in any regular YOTA-camp. A lot of people to get to know and many different things to try from many different counties.

During the next two days we had the opportunity to listen to interesting presentations, try ARDF, activate a OHFF-station, build fruit-keyers, of-air-contest and most importantly: SAUNA!

In conclusion, the camp was very giving and made it possible to create a lot of new contacts and friends all around Europe.

After the camp we have now slowly started working with the Nordic courtiers for nest years NOTA, and only time will tell how that will work out, but I think it looks good!

Meetings and planning

We have had a lot of meetings with our youth-section in SSA where we both have discussed what we have done and what we want with the rest of the year.

What are we working with right now?

Weekend camp

We are planning a national camp for youngsters combined with older hams to booth exchange knowledge and to keep in contact with our friends all around our long country.

Planning for YOTA

Preparations for the Swedish participation for this yeas YOTA have started, and we are right know looking in to who are going to be participating

That is the status with the Swedish team right now. A fun start of the year, and a lot of fun left to do.

73 de Team Sweden

March 3, 2019
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Train the Trainer report – Austria – February 2018

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At the beginning of 2019 the Youngsters in Austria were working together on some international YOTA projects, for example the YOTA online shop where you can buy clothes and accessories with YOTA branding. Of course the profits go to support YOTA projects such as the summer camp. Furthermore we were meeting to plan events in the summer months. Most of our plans are for the summer holiday period for 2 reasons. Firstly the weather makes outdoor activities much more enjoyable so it is possible to organise camping trips and field days for example. Furthermore  most youngsters are still at school or university so in the holidays they have time and are not worrying about exams and the like. We have some big plans, however we can’t talk about them just yet.

Furthermore some of the youngsters were preparing for future contest operations by acquiring new masts for the contest station oe1w where there are always many youngsters helping out building the station and operating. Another activity which we are preparing and which will happen soon is the expansion of the antenna system in the Austrian club’s headquarter station. A 12 metre Hummel mast and a 4 square will be added to the station soon. Most of the construction, mounting antennas etc. is done by youngsters. It’s always a fun day of working together on such projects. These kind of get togethers are also the perfect opportunity to introduce new youngsters to the community and to show them the kind of fun things that we do.