Train the trainer

The most recent activity from Estonia has been activating ES9YOTA callsign from various cities giving youngsters a chance to work other stations around the world. Not only usual everyday QSO’s but also getting experience on handling pile-ups. During the YOTA month, our biggest event was from ES5TV’s station where a group of youngsters (mostly from ES5 region) had the opportunity to participate in RTTY contest. Some of them made a QSO for the very first time.
Our plans for the next two months are to participate in 3 contests. One of them is NRAU-Baltic (which is Scandinavia+Baltic region oriented). NRAU contest have a certain Multi operator category, where at least half of the team has to be 20 years or younger. As of now we don’t have any long term plans.
We also have one new license – ES7GR (age 21).

When we (AE4FH and WX4TV) arrived back in Florida from YOTA 2018, we immediately started Train the Trainer.  As soon as we got out of the airport, we drove for 12 hours to the Huntsville Alabama Hamfest to tell about our experiences at YOTA and encourage youth to get involved.  About a week later, Faith Hannah (AE4FH), spoke about YOTA at several club meetings that youth attend and tried to get the youth in those clubs active.  The most success we have achieved is with our YouTube channel, Ham Radio (dot) World, where we encourage more people to get into the hobby, many of them youth.  Since YOTA 2018, we have been able to inspire about ten people to get their license or upgrade.

In the next few months, we plan to participate in the December YOTA month with the callsign WK1DS/YOTA.  During December, this callsign will be active with hams and potential hams of all ages.  We are considering having a “YOTA day” where it would be like a YOTA summer camp, but just for one day.  In the next few years, we hope to have YOTA started in the United States and YOTA events in IARU region 2.

With these ideas, we expect to get several youth get into the hobby and youth that are already in the hobby more active.

AE4FH

Although the amount of youngster in DL is high, the general situation still has to be improved. Around 1000 youngsters (aged 14 to 26) are members of the DARC, whereof nearly 500 are even licenced. This shows that the best way for improving the situation is to work with the existing youngsters.

Therefore our first steps will be to find out more about our already existing young members. While working with them together, we first want to get an overview of why they are doing ham radio, which issues are the most fascinating for them, what do they like and what do they think about ham radio in general. But besides those who can give more detailed answers in these questions, our aim is also to involve those who aren’t active (anymore). Some already have been active but somehow lost their interest. Finding out the reason for this can help us not just to reactive them, but also to avoid that new youngsters will loose their interest.

Another point where we especially in Germany need to focus on are those who are members through a family membership. Since they know a little bit of radios and since they do often have an active family member, they already have someone close who can help them in the beginning. They just need to experience that it’s not just a hobby of their parents, it also is a hobby which is interesting for youngsters and that they there is youth in ham radio!

This is why we want to bring youngsters together and create a youth network where they can share experiences and ideas, but mainly also to get to know each other. There already are smaller groups, but we would like to reach also cross-regional contacts between all those youngsters, especially those who don’t have a youth group in their club. To achieve all of this, we’re currently planning a youth camp, where we invite all youngsters to take part and get to know each other so that youngsters will stay in touch with one another.

Some youngsters, who didn’t know each other before, spend a weekend together at the DX-Hotel at DM9EE through the YouthContestProgram. During the whole weekend and besides the contest there was still enough time left to get to know one another. Through this weekend we realized that even such a smaller event has already been enough to get youngsters connected, since the most important ice-breaker seems to be to meet each other. All participants also highly welcomed the idea of a german youth camp.

We’re happy to finally announce the first german youth camp, which will also be a subregional YOTA-camp! It will take place in Baunatal from 15^th to 17^th March 2019.  To achieve enough attendence of german youngsters, the main language during the camp will be German. All activities are also held in english (at least with an interpreter) so that both, our international guest can take part without any disadvantage and german youngsters who aren’t speaking much english can improve their skills.

The idea behind our camp program is to bring youngsters with same interests together since this constitues the basis of further exchange beyond the camp. The programm also includes the idea of “youngsters for youngsters” and “choose your interest” because we want to avoid to bore youngsters with long presentations of topics where they might not be interested, but also to give enthusiastic young hams the change to share their ideas with other interested ones.

Register for the (nonbinding!) newsletter: https://ajw.darc.de/subregional2019/index.php

For questions so far, please don’t hesitate to write to ham-yota@darc.de!

Now, during the December Yota Month, the German station DF0YOTA is QRV at various stations with a lot of Youngsters! To coordinate the time slots for the callsign, we created an online calendar, where everyone can see which time slots (for the whole december) are still available and which are already taken. All interested youngster can easily book an available time slot by sending an online reservation inquiry which is then approved by the callsign coordinator.

For all taken slots you can see by whom this time slot is taken. This entails that youngsters can arrange shifting if it is necessary. Especially for those who just have limited or rarely access to a station this can be pretty helpful.

ACTIVITIES SINCE 15th OF OCTOBER 2018

• Haroldas LY5IM handles LKB project’s (our High-Altitude Baloon project) public relations:

• Development of a new website and merchandise line (will go up in the next few days);
• Revival of the Facebook feed on LKB activities;

Since our last report we are glad to expand more on LKB’s goals and accomplishments:

Our goal is to launch the first lithuanian-made circumnavigating high altitude balloon.

LKB project is progressing well:

• Payload weight is being successfully reduced (now below 40g., still awaiting custom circuit board and optimising energy usage for a smaller quantity of batteries);
• Expected balloon quantity and inflation has been accounted for, with many thanks to Hans Summers;
• Software is currently in a debugging stage;
• New social channels are being developed to show ourselves for more people and spread the information on benefits of such projects;

In summary, we have a clear goal of launching a lightweight circumnavigator as a stepping stone for further HAB projects and all of it  is nicely coming together.

Barbora, LY1KB, as of 20st of October 2018, conducted the JOTA-JOTI Scouting event where 80m-10m HF station was successfully active on air;

• Domantas, LY1JA:
  • has configured and started operations of FT8 in Vilnius University radio club;
  • toured the club for VGTU aviation students and installed ADS-B rx station on club’s premises
  • together with potential ham’s has participated in winter ARDF events;
• A new fully fledged youngster ham, Lukas Bartkus,
  • has retained his exams for B and A class licenses, receiving a call sign  LY1LB;
  • Connected local club repeater LY0RVN through echolink;
• Furthermore LY1LB and LY5IM toured the VU radio club for Vilnius J. Basanavičiaus Gymnasium students, two of them found using baofeng radios for everyday chatter;
  • Thus both (LY1LB, LY5IM) provided information on public-usage frequencies as well as information on preparation for examination to attain ham licenses;
  • They still keep in touch (creation of two new ham’s is highly expected);
• LY1LB and LY5IM have soldered proper outdoor wiring for a new HF antenna rotator as a part of preparations for the YOTA month;
• LY1LB, LY5IM, LY5AT, LY1JA used the LY5YOTA call sign most frequently and among the club members, were the most active VU radio shack’s visitors during this YOTA month;

PLANS FOR NEXT 2 MONTHS

1. Continue working with new interested people;
2. Setting up proper SDR working station;
3. Further work towards LY high altitude amateur radio balloon experiment;

LONG-TERM PLANS

1. Further improvements on 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;
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

• https://www.facebook.com/ly1bwb/
• https://www.facebook.com/lrmd.lt/
• http://lrmd.lt/
• https://armanual.netlify.com/

What have we done since last report?

Leader meeting:
During a weekend in October, the Swedish time met up with the Finnish and Norwegian team to talk about the Nordic cooperation. We also Skyped together with the Icelandic team and have tried to reach the Danish team without any success. The weekend was a great success and we have made a good plan for the future together.

Yota December:
Our early plan for December worked out quite well and we were able to hold YOTA-December camps during three weekends, starting from the north in Umeå at SK2AT  in the first weekend with three participants. After that Stockholm one week after at SK0QO once again with three people participated, finishing the task with three participants down in Jönköping the last weekend at SK7AX. We used the call sign SH9YOTA and have over the three weekends accumulated a total of around 1000 contacts.

Speeches:
We have had the opportunity to hold a speech about ham radio at the technical museum of Stockholm which Joakim SA0BSJ took care of. He talked about YOTA and how the youth work in Sweden works.

What are we working with right now?

Right now we are planning next year and we are making our budget. We are also planning the trip to NOTA and recruiting people to join that. We have slowly planning a camp after the summer next year.

What are our goals?

We continue with the same goals as in the last report. That is to keep regular activities each year as follows:

NOTA
To give the Swedish youth an opportunity to get friends and further get into the hobby.

YOTA
For youngsters to develop more fun ideas to bring back home to our activities.

Fall weekend event
A smaller follow up event to meet our NOTA friends in Sweden from the previous NOTA and for the youngsters who did not manage to participate in NOTA.

3 December YOTA events
Lighter, more casual events at three club stations for the youngsters to get active with the exciting DYM-Signal during three entire weekends (fri-sun).

73 de Team Sweden

YOTA DECEMBER

Recently we have organized weekend gathering where we took part in the Yota December activity. It was two days and nights from 14.12. to 16.12.2018. It was in Scouts clubhouse in Rychnov nad Kneznou.

We used the callsign OL18YOTA and with one TS-850 and the Windom and vertical antenna we did 508 QSOs. It sums tfo the previous QSO made by single members to total count of 920 QSOs. The conditions were changing, but during Sunday noon we had very nice open on 40m where we made around 100 QSO in single pileup.

As we wanted to build the community not only bring the youngsters to the radio, we did various activities where youngsters could get to know each other. We played board games and prepared food on the indoor “campfire” as it was really cold outside.

We spend really pleasant and relaxing time together and everybody left to their home towns during Sunday afternoon.

Jindra OK1NOR, Honza OK1JD

PRESENTATION

There was a presentation about YOTA summer camp in my Gymnasium and Industrial school on December 18th. Fifteen people participated and  for most of them it was the first time when they heard about radio amateurs and their activities.

I told them everything we’ve experienced during YOTA, and explained that it’s not only for elderly people, how most of them thinks. I highlighted that there are much more youngsters than they could imagine. After that it was time for questions and a little speech about SOTA activities. This was done by the teacher Frantisek Stepan OK2VFS who is also HAM, he was helping me through all the afternoon.

Martina OK2YLQ