Train the trainer

In the month October we had promote JOTA-JOTI by visit 4 local groups, we have made pictures for an article in the monthly edition of Electron. (magazine of the VERON)

On 3 November we have met youngsters and other people at the Dutch day for amature radio (https://dvdra.veron.nl/).

This year we had a new location at the ijsselhallen in Zwolle.

Here we had a Jeugdplein (youth square).

At this youth square many children and youngster have made a home made project. (this is a buildkit from the JOTA-JOTI service group) You can find the kits on their website: www.kitbuilding.org

Also in the month November, VERON had published the Youth Electron. This is a special edition of the magazine of the monthly edition of Electron.

In this special Youth edition everything is written for youth and children. This edition seems very popular by the youth and children of JOTA-JOTI and at the youth square in Zwolle.

At this moment we have the call signs PD6YOTA and PA6YOTA in the air for December YOTA Month 2018. Look for the actual logbook at https://events.ham-yota.com/

On 5 January 2019 we will participate at Kids Day. Therefore we promote this event by written an article in the Electron edition of January.

Train the Trainer Report December 2018

The last two months were filled with very important events for youngsters in Austria. Although we did not organise any special meetings or activities in this period we still achieved a lot to make it easier to organise events in the future. The OEVSV (the Austrian amateur radio society) held it’s annual meeting where all the regions and different sections were present and discussed the next year, especially the budget. We made sure that youth was an important point on the agenda. Some of the young members were present to show what we had achieved during the last year and what we were planning on doing in 2019. Many of the older generation OMs did not realise how much youth work is going on and that it is worth doing. Sadly some older club members still think that youth work is not necessary and should not be supported. However we also have very strong support from other club members who are very supportive of our plans. It is great to cooperate with them, especially because they are always able to help with their experience.

The national society meeting was followed closely by the annual meeting of the largest regional club. Again a number of youngsters were present in order to show that youth is important and there are actually more youngsters in amateur radio than most people might think. We managed to get one of the youngsters, Nicolas, OE1NBS, elected as youth coordinator, you might know him from YOTA Austria. This is a great opportunity to make cooperation between the youngsters and the society easier and it allows us to work more closely together with the society. We also requested a budget for youth work, however it is not yet confirmed.

12 Amateur radio stations were set up across Austria as part of JOTA, there were many different activities as each station had their own programme. For example some offered simple kit building. Scouts could make their own CW key with a small circuit which makes a sound when pressed. This was of course accompanied by teaching the scouts to give their names etc. in CW. Highlight of the day were contacts to other JOTA stations around the world via HF, many of the young scouts were amazed that they were able to talk to other scouts in distant countries without any infrastructure in between.

Another important event was the CQ WW SSB contest. A group of youngsters was planning to take part in the contest from a large contest station, however this station was out of operation due to technical problems. Instead the team took part from the radio club headquarters. More experienced contest operators gave tips to those who were less experienced and taught them everything they know about operating. For a few of the youngsters it was the first contest.

Some of our plans for the coming months are:

• To organise that our youth team can participate in contests, we want to create a skilled and experienced contest team but we also want to give youngsters who have very little contest experience the chance to participate. For example the DARC christmas contest which is coming up at the end of December.

• We are working on improving the club station of the national radio society, we are adding an extra 12 metre mast with another multiband yagi and building a 4 square for 40 metres.

• We are also organising a workshop where we will be building long wire antennas for 40, 80 and 160 metres which we will put up at the club station but which youngsters can also build themselves and take home.

• We are working on an app which makes it easier for youngsters to learn for the radio exam. It is much easier to learn on a smartphone when you are in the train on the way to school than having to sit down with a book and learn the traditional way. We have a lot of ideas for the app. And of course we will also publish it in english. If you have suggestions or ideas you can send us an email.
• We are considering organising a subregional YOTA camp in the summer of 2019.
• We want to expand our social media channels to other platforms, however we first have to create more content to post on these channels. Therefore we are planning some small events especially to take pictures and make videos for instagram and youtube. Thnakfully we have some great photographers and videographers in our youth group. Hopefully the pictures will be part of the next TTT report.
• We have approached a number of schools and were invited to present amateur radio to the students, it will definitely be interesting to see how they react and which parts they are interested in more than others. Of course we will put the presentation (translated into english) and what we learnt on the train the trainer site for you.
• We are planning some activities in 2 technical school which already have amateur radio stations but have to be re-activated. The problem is that the students which were interested in amateur radio and which ran the station left the school because they graduated and did not pass it on to the next students. We will do a presentation at the schools and try to make it more sustainable by supporting the youngsters more and hopefully also licensing some teachers so that they can pass the interest on to the next classes.

The main thing, that has been in our mind in Finland for the past two months has been December YOTA month. DYM-camp was held at the start of December, which we mentioned in our last Train The Trainer post. It was organized by the national youth board, Nuorisotiimi. The event is now in the past, and everything worked out very well. We had around 15 participants in the age range from 15 to 27. The main focus of the event was to help and encourage youngsters to a more versatile and active hobby. Over the weekend we also made over 5000 QSOs and the number is going to increase as youngsters in Finland have a possibility to rent a callsign OH2YOTA to spread the youth around the world.

The second thing we’ve had in the past two months was a NOTA meeting and a get together weekend for Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic youth representatives in Korpilahti. The meeting was a great success and we all got some great ideas for the future of not only our countries but for the whole Nordic youth amateur radio community.

Next bigger thing in the future of Finnish and also Nordic youth amateur radio society will be NOTA, (Nordics On The Air) camp which was held in Sweden in 2018. This year it will be held in Salo, southern Finland during Easter. Also, Finnish national youth board will have a weekend meeting in January, which will be focused on youth activities in Finnish amateur radio society. Also, we have to think about getting new people into the hobby, and especially about why youngsters find their way to the hobby so rarely?

In the future, we will be marketing our hobby more widely in social media as well as in person. Finnish amateur radio magazine, “Radioamatööri” also has a special edition magazine focused to be used on marketing the hobby for youngsters. We will be spreading that more widely in the future.

Finnish youth in amateur radio will stay active on social media via Nordics On The Air Instagram page, @nordicsontheair, which will stay active in the future as it has been now. The page is maintained by Finnish and Swedish youth boards, and it is supposed to spread in other Nordic countries as well in the short-term future. We also have WhatsApp and Facebook groups for Finnish, and Telegram chat for Nordic young hams which we use widely for communication.

Train the Trainer

I believe that getting young people attracted to ham radio is quite a challenge in every single country. It is not that kids don’t like to experiment with new things, it’s just that Estonia overall is extremely IT oriented. It all started in late 90ies with government funded projects. The aim was to have special computer classes in every single school. That of course led to special computer classes that gave overall introduction to computers, software, programming etc. As it has been growing over the years it has been now adapted as mandatory class in every single school. So basically what we are creating is a lot of software developers from early ages. And this is something that kids actually like. Now the big question is how to take those enthusiasts and introduce them to ham radio?

What comes to licensing in Estonia it is quite simple and easy. We do have 3 different possible license classes from Rookie to Expert.  Rookie class requires an easy exam with basic questions about ham radio, radio waves etc. We do not have any age limit, so basically even a preschool kid can have a license. Of course at first everything will be supervised and making a first QSO is also taught by an elder. Those who like it, usually keep going and growing into it. But those who like IT technologies more, they just eventually stick to software developing.

At this very moment we have approximately 4 schools with possibility to experiment with ham radio. 2 of them in capital city Tallinn, 1 in Tartu and one in southern region. Not only making QSOs and pure contesting, they teach soldering, making receivers, antennas etc. So there is some sort of youth work going on, but it is the lack of children. If you can choose from creating phone apps or talking to old people over the radio, most would choose the first.

We also have an agreement with ES5TV (ES9C station), that whenever all youngsters are always welcome to use his station. We are participating in JOTA projects. We constantly invite them to major contest, also YOTA coordinated events such as ARI contest, which brings some foreign youngsters here. So long story short, we do have something, not everything. We have schools and superstations to use, we just don’t have children. And this is the biggest problem we face right now. Because licensing is easy, we have no age limit, we have stations from where we could work. We just don’t have ideas how to get more youngsters to join.

ES7GM

There were 2 unlicensed people on YOTA from bulgarian team, Angelika and Vanesa. Angelika and more 6 people went to the courses we did for ham radio and from 8 people 7 were licensed. Vanesa did harec examination on YOTA and got the best ham radio class in our country ! Angelika’s callsign is – LZ1ANQ, Vanesa’s callsign is – LZ1BR

We made QSL cards same like the posters and they were given to people in schools and universities.

( 2 in months )
We plan to make more advertisement projects which are completely free, like visiting schools and making presentation about ham radio on physics classes.

( 6-12 )
Our idea is to continue ham radio courses and keep them on every season ( that is the idea for now ). For example – Summer ( course starts 03.06 – 25.06 ends ) and like this every season, and courses will be matched will exams soon after they end.