The last day of the fair started again at 9 o‘clock. While the whole fair wasn‘t as crowed as Saturday, we were visited by a lot of people who were attracted by all the YOTA promotion activities of the previous day. Also some of the Big Gun Contest stations came by to discuss further details about the Youth Contesting Program. We hope to soon announce more upcoming YCP events!

At 12 o‘clock the last prize draw for this year‘s fair took place. Great to see again a crowd around our booth and the happy faces of our winners!

Soon the fair was coming to an end and it was time for the dismantling. Everything stowed away in the car, the team made their way home again. Thank you to all people involved into the preparations, the organisation and the presence for our very own YOTA booth this year – you have been awesome!

At this point also a huge THANK YOU to the DARC HamCamp organizers who offered our international youngsters a cheap and most comfortable place to stay over the weekend directly in the fairgrounds. They already announced that they will have more capacity coming up in next years editon!

See you all again at HamRadio 2020 in Friedrichshafen. Don‘t miss all our activities through the year; keep updated about our events via our homepage, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

73 de YOTA PR Team

The YOTA booth was ready for today’s fair at nine o’clock. Right at the beginning the first visitors were already there. Attracted by the many young people at the booth, many came by during the day, from young to old, to find out more about YOTA and its activities.

Around 10 am most of the youngsters could be found in room Liechtenstein, where the International Youth Meeting took place again. The room was full beyond the last chair! We even had to organize a few more chairs for all the visitors. After a short welcome by our chair Lisa (PA2LS), Riku (JR2KHB) gave a special lecture about youth activities organized through YOTA Japan, a project born and inspired by YOTA of IARU Region1. But also the European activities did not come too short: reports from Germany (Claudia – DC2CL, Philipp – DK6SP), Finland (Kati – OH2FKX) and Italy (Silvio – IZ5DIY) about the latest YOTA Subregional Camps followed. In the end, of course, a photo of all the present youth should not be missing!

At noon the YOTA team (Claudia – DC2CL, Philipp -DK6SP) were guests at the Contest Forum and presented the Youth Contesting Program. The present Big Gun contesters from all over the world were astonished when they saw what excellent teamwork and places the youth teams made during their participation in the contest during the YCP Program!

At this point a big THANKS to Lukas (OE1LBS), Wolfgang (OE1WBS), Nici (OE1NBS), Sylvia (OE1YXS) and Pieter (ON1GPS) for streaming all the YOTA events during this years HAMRADIO!

In the afternoon all the youngsters gathered again in the big exhibition hall A1 for the annual “YOTA train”. The goal: to show everyone “YES, THERE IS YOUTH IN HAM RADIO!”. Starting at the YOTA booth, they visited the IARU member societies and long-time sponsors at their booths.

Later it was time for the drawing to find the today’s lottery winners. Everywhere around the booth was a huge crowd, hoping that their ticket will be the winning one.

At 6 p.m. the fair was over for Saturday – and the preparations for Sunday were on the agenda in the evening.

See you tomorrow,
73 de YOTA PR Team

For the first time we were given the opportunity by IARU to organize our very own YOTA booth at HAMRADIO in Friedrichshafen this year.
We grabbed the chance instantly and organized everything … booth A1-594 was born.

We set up everything on Thursday in advance to be ready for the official opening on Friday 9 am.
Our booth has been crowded all day. We have been visited by a lot of youngsters from all over the world.
Meanwhile we ran the daily video reports from previous YOTA camps on our big TV screen an shared old memories together with participants.

A significant event today has been the flag handover from South Africa (2018) to Bulgaria (2019). With the help of YOTA Team OE we were able to stream it live on our official Facebook page. Moderated by our Youth WG Chair Lisa (PA2LS), we handed over the flag as well as our YOTA morse key without any problems. The audience were impressed by the presentations and videos from both teams.

After the flag ceremony finished, we went to our booth again and started the daily Prize Draw. You could win 5 brand new YOTA coffee/tea mugs and 4 original YOTA Hoodies. The booth was completely crowded and we found our lucky winners.

At 6 pm the fair closed its doors and we prepared the booth for the upcoming day tomorrow. Afterwards we all left for the annual YOTA dinner at lake Constance/Bodensee. Over 70 YOTA and friends joined at a Biergarten just next to the lake. We had great fun and everybody enjoyed the evening. Let’s see what happens tomorrow – see you soon at our booth.

73 de YOTA PR Team

Day 2 at Dayton Hamvention 2019 started early for us. We arrived around 1h before the official opening at 8 am.

The YOTA booth within the Hamradio 2.0 area in Volta Hall is crowded all the time. Many people are coming by to visit and have a chat with us. More and more people are recognizing our faces and activities from recent social media postings and magazine articles. So did even the mayor of Xenia, Sarah J. Mays. We were taking part at the official opening ceremony in between the halls of the fair ground. After the official procedure the press officer of the mayor bureau came over to us. He had asked us if they could take a picture with us. We have been really honoured and chatted a bit about the future of amateur radio and the YOTA program with them. They were really impressed and wished us good luck for the future. Find this awesome picture below in the gallery.

As you can see our YOTA flag is with us wherever we go. Many hams and future operators come by and stop us for pictures. Please do not hesitate to do so, we are glad to talk to everybody of you and taking pictures. Of course, the traditional clothes are also doing there job for getting some attention here in Dayton, Ohio.

One of our main tasks for today was to visit a lot of our prime long time supporters like YASME Foundation or Messi & Paoloni Cables at the fair. We had great chats about the future of the YOTA program there as well. Thanks for your ongoing support!

Another big point on our list has been the presence at the International Amateur Radio Union booth together with the IARU worldwide president Tim (VE6SH) and Dave (K1ZZ). We spoke about future projects, upcoming YCP events and the December Youth Month and its progress over the years.

One of our YOTA team members here in Dayton, Markus (DL8GM), who is also member of our YOTA IT department also has a second booth to be here. He is doing the Linux version of the newly introduced Charly25 project. We met up with him and he gave us a short introduction to their new SDR radio. We were emphasized and a lot of youngsters joined the conversation just by seeing our faces there. So we can say that here are all over youngsters involved in great projects.

After a great evening at Crowne Plaza Hotel in the city of Dayton and many interesting conversations with the worlds top known contesters and DXers we ended the day very successfully. We will be back tomorrow at the fair with talks about our Youth Contesting Program at 12:00 at the Hamradio 2.0 forum. Furthermore we were invited to join the international contest dinner again in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the evening.

In conclusion it has been an awesome first fair day and we are really looking forward for tomorrow!

See you all there!

In behalf of the Dayton YOTA Staff
73 de Philipp, DK6SP
YOTA PR Team

Flying from Munich (Germany) via Atlanta (Georgia, USA) we arrived in Dayton late on wednesday evening. After checking into our apartment we headed to the fair ground on the next morning. The booth is almost set up and we are more or less ready to go. On the evening we joined the annual international affairs welcome dinner in Dayton and met some new faces from all over the world already.
While still suffering from changing timezones and finding the right time to sleep we are working on plans for the upcoming days. Lots of talks and events on our list, not to forget the evening program!
Please feel free to visit us at in the Volta hall (Building 4) at booth 4304 directly next to the Hamradio 2.0 area.
Talk to us where ever you can catch us!

Looking forward to another great weekend ahead including meeting a lot of new faces and great talks.

73 from the YOTA Team
Philipp (DK6SP), Markus (DL8GM), Flo (OE3FTA) & Larissa (SWL)

This year’s second Kidsday will be held on Saturday 15th of June . This event is especially created to promote Amateur Radio to youth. This is a moment where you can share your amateur radio hobby with your family, grandkids, friends, scouts or even to the general public. This day can be the first time for youth to experience a real radio QSO, hopefully they get interested in becoming a licensed amateur radio operator.
You could make use of this suggested exchange: Name, age, location and favourite colour. Be sure to work the same station again if an operator has changed. To draw attention, call “CQ Kids Day.”

Suggested frequencies IARU R1:
10 Meters: 28.350 to 28.400 MHz
15 Meters: 21.360 to 21.400 MHz
20 Meters: 14.270 to 14.300 MHz
40 Meters: 7.080 to 7.120 MHz
80 Meters: 3.650 to 3.750 MHz

Other suggested frequencies by ARRL:
12 Meters: 24.960 to 24.980 MHz
17 Meters: 18.140 to 18.145 MHz
40 Meters: 7.270 to 7.290 MHz
80 Meters: 3.740 to 3.940 MHz

Once agin ES5TV opened his station doors for the well known YOTA Youth Contesting Program participating youngsters during ARI DX contest as always. This year we didn’t put together such a big team to compete in M/M category, but looks like we did put together another M/S world winning team. We were a 5 operator team, 3 of them were youngsters under the age of 26 – Carmen ES5CAMA, Mari ES5MARI and me Kris YL3JA. We had two OMs as well, Kaspars YL1ZF and Jüri ES5JR. We had another team for the stuff in kitchen and food, that was my girlfriend Endija (let’s say that she’s from YL1ZT and YL1XN clubs hihi). Another team consists of Valery ES5QA who was the main cheerleader and sauna operator. Contest was great as always, with just a few little issues, like flexRadio suddenly wanted to make an update, but otherwise everything worked smoothly. It’s always interesting to participate in this kind of contest, jumping between 3 modes. Anyway, thank you to Tonn (ES5TV) again for letting youngsters participate from your “big gun station”. It was a big pleasure for all of us and hopefully there will be more youngsters joining the YCP soon, it is real fun!

In behalf of the team,
73 de Kris, YL3JA