Yota Italy never gives up!

At the end of february we got stuck in the lockdown due to the Covid-19 situation, it wasn’t easy to stay at home for more than two months but we managed with no problems at all, most of the youngsters are students, which, of course, were stuck in their houses and we got to find something to do! here are some of our activities:

1. YOTA NET

The YOTA NET event is already a tradition of the international team, it’s a special evening where we meet over the air to spend some time together, we thought that the lockdown would have been a great event to do a NET! We first started in 40m band but at that moment they were unusable, we also tried 20m and 80m but with no success at all… the only way was to use one of the biggest ham radio repeater in north Italy that provides coverage of the whole north area (IR3UX) with a live stream of the NET on the Discord platform in order to let all the youngsters able to listen the big QSO that born in that moment, we got more than 20 non-Yota operators that came to salute us. Success!!

2. Online CW lessons

We noticed that some youngsters were interested in learning CW but they never had the opportunity to do that, so we decided to start an online class made from youngsters to other youngsters! Two teachers were on charge: Matteo IU4LGT and Ernesto IU0LJD, we had 12 participants for more than two months and we were all able to learn the basics of a QSO and also do some training over the air!

3. RadioMobile online class

A well-known software for ham radio operators is “radiomobile”, a special program which allows you to create coverage maps, link budgets and much more! The teacher for this lesson was Sebastian IN3FOX which has shown us how to make a coverage map for a repeater and how to find the best route and places for a radio assistance (for example during a rally or any other type of similar race).

4. 4NEC2 lesson

Another very interesting software is 4NEC2, this program allows to draw, study and optimize any kind of antenna, it shows the radiation pattern, gain, f/b ratio and much more. Marco IU2DPM (the teacher) taught us how to make a GP antenna and a three element Yagi for the 2m band.

5. GnuRadio class

We all know that ham radio is always getting closer to the PC so Francesco IU3GNB thought to show u show to use GnuRadio, a software that is able to create a flow chart and talk to and from SDR or any other type of digital stream in order to get and send data to the PC. Francesco taught us how to create a two-way chat connected to the Adalm Pluto that the “Urgensat Team” presented at the Maker Faire Rome 2019, a text chat based on the QO-100 satellite

6. Radio, radio e ancora radio!

The main activity for an ham radio operator is the radio of course and we all participated to a lot of different events that the Covid situation made even more crowded!

The most participated events were the Italian Activity Contest which runs through the whole year in the VHF & UP bands, we had 15 youngsters in the 144MHz category and other guys in the 430MHz and 1296MHz chart. We also have IU4FNO which is going to be in the first three places of the national competition, congratulations! We also participated at the “Sezioni VHF/UHF”, “Cinisello VHF”, “Trofeo ARI 50MHz” and “Lazio VHF”.

Even on the HF bands we had youngsters participating in the WPX SSB, EA RTTY, OK-OM DX, Yuri Gagarin, SP DX, Helvetia, ARI DX, UBA CW e Russian DX.

We all hope to keep this spirit through the whole months and years and hope to see you on the air!

As we all know is has been difficult to organize something or even to imagine the future.
News here are good, one of the F youngsters left France in January to study in South Korea, the others obtains degrees and achieved their studies.

Each youngsters enjoyed “on-air” time on their own (a bit sad by the way). I took part in the ARRL DX SSB from LX7I, then enjoyed the WPX SSB in 9A remotely from France and then I will have the opportunity for the second time to join HQ team during the upcoming IARU.

YOTA F activities are down, and for the next five years I really hope that we will have more and more young licenced in France. There will be events as each year to promote local clubstation and society where each youngsters will be present to promote their activity. There is also the science weeks (october) where we have at the local clubstation 4 days of presentation of the hobby to boys and girls (from 7 to 10 years old).

Next year as we should have organized that activity this year, we will try to meet during a week end, as well as taking part together in a contest, and being at the SummerCamp !

Something that I want to try is to make a couple of articles with fresh descriptions, pictures and explanations of what is hamradio and why there is still interest in this hobby even in the youth sphere – and then to diffuse them. We all saw too much articles where old ham get a place in press, with an ugly picture, where the journalist restitution of what said that guy about radio ever sound annoying.. So we will try to get this up!

For the rest with a little group it’s difficult to impulse something, find something new, try to get the rest involved or interested but, no worries that we will get that group running well !