Train the trainer

First off, Iceland is small. Like tiny. My ham radio license is number 434, from the beginning. I am the 18th YL to have a callsign, since 1960ish. We are very few but also very close. The Icelandic way of doing things is “Doing a lot but no planning involved because that’ll scare people off.”

The youth team in Iceland is technically just me and TF8RN. But in reality it is us and mainly radioscouts. There are 1-4 people involved and they have a supporting network of IRA members, scouts and family around them.

Next week is going to be the biggest JOTA/JOTI of the past 10ish years. There’s a team of YLs and IRA members that will help the scouts with the shack and TF8RN is going to try and activate TF3YOTA from his own station. This is solely planned by scouts, a lot of people who attended the JOTA/JOTI last year and saw its potential (it hadn’t been very active in a long time).

I plan activities by calling one person and asking if they’d like to do something, like would they be up for activating TF3YOTA with me from the IRA club station in December? If yes, then we let other people in the society know when and where and invite them to come and meet us there.

Second, I live in the Netherlands and I have voiced my concern to the IRA of how I can help there by being here but I have their full support and say that they actually think being in mainland Europe gives me more opportunity to network, which is true.

Next year, I plan to assist in any way I can with NOTA 2020, I am also laying groundwork for NOTA Iceland 2021. This will be presented at the IRA main meeting in February and I will propose that a % of the membership fee goes solely towards youth activities.

The main focus now is to build up events in a consistent manner so that the environment for youth activities is there if anyone is interested. Planning NOTA 2021 is a big step in doing that. Getting youth into the hobby in Iceland is still an issue that needs to be addressed. I have inquired about holding presentations in schools but so far they have fallen through since I am only there about a month of the year.

I discussed this with the head of the IRA and I regret to say that I will not be making bi-monthly reports when there is nothing to report. I will of course inform you when we have news but for now it’s going to be sporadic.

YOTA summer camp was on the front page of the CQ TF this month.. if that helps. And there will be an extended article on what I’ve done in the past year in the next magazine. (I attended NOTA/FHN/YOTA Bulgaria and will participate in PI4DEC/J next week)

73 de Elín, PA/TF2EQ

Maker Faire Prague June 13th-14th Prague

Czech Radio Club took place in the biggest maker fair in the Czech Republic. Because of the large number of parents with children we decided to prepare games for youngsters together with the National Technic Museum. They had the opportunity to try out morse code or their task was to light up as many lightbulbs as possible using different circuits and other fun activities. At the fair we met two boys who are interested in and excited about HAM radio, we are still in contact with them. One of them has already done the license, the other wants to take the exam soon. 

Electro camp 1st-12th August 2019

As we already mentioned in past reports, Electro camps have been  held every year since 2012. This year 48 youngsters 13 years and older participated. They soldered electronic kits, learned theory and also took part in a HAM radio contest. As always, it took place in Olbramkostel. Although we increased the capacity with a second camp date – Electro camp Junior which is for youngsters from 10 to 13 years old, the number of applicants was so great that we still had to refuse some of them. It’s a voluntary project organised for children to get them interested in and make them fall in love with (electro)technology and to show them the wonderful radio amateur world. Most participants are unlicensed, and have their first experience with amateur radio at the camp.

http://www.elektrotabor.cz/2019/

Summer Radio-electro camp Akademik 13th-17th July 2019

This camp is for youngsters 15 years of age and older, who are interested in electronics and radio technology. They learned the basics, met new friends and much more. We tried QSO by satellite and talked with people from all over the world, we built a light based walkie-talkie and learned the morse code. They had a lot of fun and made many memories. For some participants it was the first experience with amateur radio.

http://www.letni-tabory.info

YOTA Subregional OL19CAMP – Weekend of Experiences with Czech Radio Club 27th – 29th September 2019

The whole event was made possible by the youth commission: OK1VHB (IARU R1 Youth coordinator) and Líba OK1LYL (secretary). The decision to organise the YOTA subregional camp was made 3 months before the start of the event, which meant we had to work extremely hard and fast to get it ready in time. Because everyone lives somewhere else, we had to discuss everything by group chats and calls. First of all, we split the tasks among us. The most important things were finding a place where we could accommodate approximately 30 participants, come up with a program and find sponsors. We also contacted experts from different fields to make presentations for youngsters about HAM radio. After that the real work began, Honza OK1JD came up with different games for children and also prepared a presentation about the physics side of amateur radio, antennas, radios and QSO basics. Martin OK1VHB made an introduction presentation about HAM radio and the HAM spirit, showed them ARDF. Jindra OK1NOR did a J-Pole workshop in which each participant built their own antenna. Vlada OK2ZKR taught the kids basics about electronics in a form of a game and Leo OK2UUJ taught them how to make contacts via satellite. Liba OK1LYL and I decided to deal with the paperwork and I also had a presentation about all the events and activities which YOTA organises.

You can find more information about the event here.

We plan to do a weekend meeting during the December YOTA Month using the callsign  OL19YOTA, on the weekend of 6th-8th December 2019. It will be a chance for youngsters to get together and get on the air. We will also organise other fun activities, more details about that in the next report.

We have a lot of plans for the future so stay tuned! We will talk about them in the next report once we have finalised them!

Martina OK2YLQ

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

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