Train the Trainer report – Tunisia – October 2019

Team Finland at YOTA 2019

Finland has been represented at YOTA summer camps since 2012. This time the team consisted of four people: Anu OH6ME as a team leader accompanied by Otava OH3OT, Tia OH3TIA, and Mikael OH3UAF. Only Anu had been at YOTA summer camp before, so it made a nice first camp for the others. And what a camp it was!

Before the camp, we had high expectations for it, as the other youngsters in Finland had only told good things about the past camps. We knew the week would be about meeting new people, having a great time among our hobby while learning a lot of new things! Now, after the camp, I think we all can say that we were most sincerely right!

Learning at the camp was fun! The technical side was made easy from the start, nothing too difficult. Even us who had never been that much in contact with antenna building enjoyed the workshops. Also, some of the lectures (for example the antenna guying) were really good. Because as we have a youth team for organizing youth activities in Finland, we really are going to take advantage of the Train The Trainer lectures!

Visits to Sofia city center, Milara factory and LZ5R contest station we’re a huge plus to the program! It’s always nice to see something from the country you are at, and it surely should be part of future YOTA camps as well.

How does the youth team work in Finland?

In Finland, the youth team has been there since the start of the 21st century. In 2015 Juuso OH1BAR took the led of the youth team. Since then the youth team has been growing in terms of activity. In 2017 Kati OH2FKX became the team leader. In October of 2019 youth team consists of six members: Kati OH2FKX (Team leader), Niko OH5CZ (assisting team leader), Vilma OH2VT, Otava OH3OT, Anu OH6ME, and Antti OH6VA. At the end of the year Antti will leave the team with Mikael OH3UAF replacing him.

The youth team works in co-operation with the other committees of SRAL. Vilma and Otava are part of marketing committee, with Otava also attending SRAL 100 years committee from the start of 2020.

The youth team is the main youth activity organizer in Finland. We have meetings every month in Google meet. Between the meetings someone has always something to do. Most of our activities happen yearly, which makes it easier to plan as we already have experience doing similar things. For more information about what we do, check ‘What’s on the horizon’ down below!

What’s on the horizon?

Next year of youth activity in Finland will consist of the same base as last year. By next August we will organize two camps. First of them, Polar has already been held from 11th to 13th of October. At Polar, Niko OH5CZ held a contest training. With the lead of Niko, the participants operated SAC SSB with OH2YOTA-callsign in multi/multi with 180k+ score and 783 QSOs. At DYM-camp we will be having as many QSOs as we can with OH2YOTA callsign from OH5Z contest station. (Last year we made little more than 5000 QSOs in three days!)

In Finland other than camps we will continue maintaining youth section on the SRAL webpage (www.sral.info/nuoriso) and @yotafinland Instagram page and youtube-channel..  We will be making whole new youth-targeted marketing materials in co-operation with the marketing team of SRAL. We will also be writing articles to Finnish ham magazine “Radioamatööri”.  During December Yota Month, we will give youngsters and clubs in Finland an opportunity to use OH2YOTA callsign. We will market that as much as possible. That way we could maximize our DYM QSO-amount.

What comes to Nordic youth co-operation, we will deepen it by attending the Nordic youth team meeting near to Stockholm, Sweden in December of 2019. We will increase activity on our joint Instagram and make a graphical guide for @nordicsontheair social-medias. We’ll also help with organizing the NOTA 2020 in Norway next spring, which will be a tough job as there are not many youngsters in Norway.  As we want to grow the  NOTA brand, we won’t be having our own Sub-Regional camp in Finland.

Next summer there is a change that we do co-operation with OHDXF and Finnish lighthouse society to give youngsters an unique change for a DX-pedition at Market Reef OJØ, and of course, send a team to YOTA 2020! We will also arrange some programme for the youth in the SRAL’s summer camp. The program will include a youth meeting and youth operating hours from the camp station. Also, for the first time ever, we will be teaching ham radio for interested not-yet-ham youngsters at the summer camp!

As you can see, another busy year in Finland is about to start. We will be actively reporting about our activity on later TTT reports, next time in December, then you will hear how our DYM-camp went!

TTT Report DL – October 19

This years YOTA Camp brought some (smaller) changes into the TTT work in DL. Main point is that the team has grown and now consist of this year’s DL Team, some Youngsters from previous YOTA Camps and the youth coordinators of the DARC.  Since we’re all scattered throughout DL we organize ourselves using a group chat or Skype calls. Until now we mainly spoke about new ideas and techniques we got through the camp and how we can continue and improve our work so far. More concretely, this consists of a general feedback from this year’s team on the youth work done so far, as a previously uninvolved person notices other aspects. We also compared and analyzed the differences between a bigger summer camp and a subregional camp to get each camp advantages. Hereby, we were able to benefit from the ideas of other countries which were gained by our team throughout the summer camp. This includes using other tools to organize the general work and plan upcoming events.

Besides that we realized that compared to other countries, our social media performance could be better since most of the youth nowadays uses it in everyday life. Constant uploads can help to stay interested in our hobby and additionally they can show youngsters new projects what they might want to check out as well. Nevertheless, to achieve this it is necessary to constantly keep up a performance on a regular basis. We therefore still have to find a way how we can do so and which kind of social media channels we want to use. Further we also need to make sure how to reconcile this with the GDPR, especially if it comes to pictures.

For the upcoming year, we still need to determine, if, how and in which way we are going to organize a youth camp again. The feedback we got from a youth camp like e.g. the Subregional camp or the ham camp during Friedrichshafen was consistently positive, however we could not observe much interest in other activities like the YOTA summer camp or the YouthContestingProgram YCP.

For the December Yota Month we just applied for the german DYM call. We hope to attract more youngsters this year and achieve a lot more QSOs. Furthermore we will have an activity map ready where youngsters can see stations throughout the country who are willing to open their place for the December month activity. Hereby we want to create a network throughout the German ham youth to get them on the air again.

Questions, comments or ideas? Feel free to contact us also via ham-yota@darc.de

73 de YOTA team DL

ACTIVITIES SINCE YOTA 2019

• Organisation of “Jurskio memorialas” a competition for young hams and people interested in the hobby to try out various ham radio related tasks. Tasks include: Soldering, Fox hunting, SWL competition, short VHF contest and a test to test your knowledge of things every ham should know. At the end of the competition, participants got awarded with cup trophies and diplomas.
• Invited several students to join Kaunas Technology University radio sport group, and there seems to be more that wish to join. Some already had the chance to participate in local HF contests, try out fox hunting and do some soldering.
• 2 New DMR hotspots got installed and more seem to be on the way. We also got a lot more people interested in DMR, we have about 10 new DMR users in Lithuania even though older hams despise it.
• Some major contests in Lithuania started to include youngster categories with separate prizes to encourage more youngsters to participate in local contests and not to be scared of more experienced hams.

PLANS FOR NEXT 2 MONTHS

1. Help organise JOTA-JOTI event at Kaunas Technology University and do some QSO’s from University’s radio club with other scout stations.
2. Install another DMR hotspot in Kaunas city to further increase the coverage and try to encourage more amateurs to use DMR radio.
3. Finish installing the new 70cm repeater in the capital city Vilnius that has been graciously donated by several local hams.

LONG-TERM PLANS

1. Fully rebuild previously dismantled Kaunas Technology University radio sport station (LY7A) with the help of the University and club members.
2. Continue making people interested in ham radio

Links

• Vilnius University amateur radio club’s Facebook page
• Lithuanian Radio Sport Federation’s site

After the YOTA camp in Bulgaria our team was very motivated to continue working on presenting our hobby to young population. We’ve shared the experience we had in Bulgaria with several other young radio amateurs from our country.

On request of our young members in our radio club in Stip, this year we have shortened the summer break and restarted the courses a little bit earlier. Almost every day there is youngsters in the radio club who are exploring our hobby.

L-R Bobi (Z33BOB), Ivan (Z33ROC), Ivan, Darko(Z33JBT), Filip, Meto (Z33MED), Ivan (Z33IMS)

We have organized many portable VHF activities, where youngsters had chance for making QSOs on repetitors. Morse code courses are held every time when we are in the radio club.

In Bitola after successfully held course for ham radio and passing the exams, there are two new young licenced radio amateurs. Dimitar Z33DBX and Viktor Z32VIK.

On the ham radio meeting organized by our society, me Veljan (Z33C) and Andrej (Z33RTF) held one presentation about all the activities we had in Bulgaria.

It was very nice view to see many new young radio amateurs from all over the country attending the meeting. Beside the presentation of our activities at the camp, our society organized ARDF competition.

All the youngsters entered the competition, it was much fun.

Also there was HF radio station equipment setup where everyone had chance to see how operating on radio station looks like.

Train The Trainer report

EA team: EA1IXD, EA1JAY & EA1JBE.

First of all, we would like to tell about our experience at the YOTA camp in Bulgaria past August. Our team was composed by three members, for two of us it was the first time ever at a YOTA camp, and we really had a great experience that we would like to repeat (and we’ll try if next year it’s possible). The time in Bulgaria really helped all of us to understand, learn and share technical things and procedures on the radio amateur world. The TTT sessions helped us to share with others what we had been doing in Spain and what we were going to do and learn from the other teams too. These are only few reasons why we think the YOTA camps should continue to be held.

Second, we can by now tell that we’re getting ready for the December YOTA month, which we are expecting with enthusiasm.

After the camp URE, the national Spanish society got in contact with us in order to prepare a report for the monthly magazine, which was published this month (October). They also told us to prepare a presentation to expose our experience in Bulgaria during the IberRadio ham radio fair, which is the biggest amateur radio fairs in Spain and one of the biggest in the South of Europe. There, we made the presentation and the society decided to present the new Youth Committee, which will be preparing the upcoming Youngster activities. By now, we’ve sent the callsign request for the December YOTA Month to the Telecommunications authority.

Also, during IberRadio, youngsters without callsign could enjoy some workshops where they learned more about the radio, and some of them showed high interest on getting a callsign!

At this moment, we’re working with the Youth Committee to get everything ready for December YOTA Month and planning more youth activities yet to announce.

Until next report,

Regards from Spain!

Albanian radio ham youngsters.

Our team participated for the first time in a YOTA activity and was an honour for me to be the leader of the albanian team. This experience motivated us to keep going and better ourselves. As difficult as it is to be a radio amateur in Albania we are committed to push forward and to bring more people in. With the help of all the presentations and the tips that were given we now are trying to implement those to our reality. Also thanks to YOTA we know have friends from different countries and are so happy to share experience and learn from each other .

Our group consists of 10 licensed youngsters, from which just 5 of us are active. We try to find a day in which we can come together to operate on the radio. Now it has become more hard as we go to different universities.

After YOTA I have come with some ideas and I have communicated them to the rest of the  team. To make those ideas come true we need funding and that’s what we have tried to do .

We went on the open sports day and presented our sport to the locals. Which were curious enough to listen to us and showed interest in it.

We have found it difficult to make those ideas reality because of the wrong idea people have for our sport and the lack of funding from the government.

For now we are just focusing on creating new time tables with the days and the hours of the week in which we can operate from the radio station( for lack of our own radios) and also on the new classes for beginners who were intrested from the open sport day.

We look forward for any tips.

73

Ledina Kamami, ZA1LK

When the YO team returned from this year’s YOTA camp, the girls were very excited and eager to learn more and to help spread the word about this hobby. The HST world championships were approaching though and the first month was a bit of a slow burn because even though some people from the society (the ones who made it possible for the team to take part in YOTA this year) were interested in doing more and helping the youngsters do more, championships at the moment still take priority since they require quite a bit of funding.

Still, right after the camp, the YO team wrote a report on their experience there which was posted on the society’s Facebook page and it was also published in the society’s magazine. The article covered all that was done during the week, how the girls felt about learning more and it had a positive tone and pictures – both taken by the participants and that were posted on the YOTA page. All of the girls also posted about the camp on their social media, pictures and impressions, since the YO YOTA does not have social media, yet.

The HST competitors that were part of the camp did operate the station that was available during the world championships from Albena, mid-September. The other youngsters on the HST team were interested in the stories they heard about YOTA and some have started going to their local club stations. Our YOTA participants are also more acquainted with this hobby now than they were before.

At the moment, this is what is in store from the YO youngsters:

• Mihaela Macsim (YO8TLK) is writing an article about ham radio that will be published in the magazine of her university, the school year has just begun a couple weeks ago. Other youngsters have already written for their school magazines.
• A youth committee is in the talks, there are more youngsters that are interested, however the committee has to be elected and that will take place around the end of the year. Still, the youngsters are going to operate and find other means to spread the word.
• During national training camps for HST there will now be stations (or more, if there were any before) available for the youngsters to work while taking a break from practice. HST competitors must be licensed, so that part is already taken care of for them to work the radio.
• We want to maybe start holding presentations in high schools, this however will take a bit of time to prepare.
• There will be an awarding ceremony at the end of the year for winning contesters in all fields (HST, ARDF, etc.) where people from various television channels will be present and the youngsters will be interviewed/will interview various people and thus discuss YOTA and future YOTA activities.
• Presently, the society does have social media and youth activity is being posted there.
• Recently, holding a subregional camp was discussed between members of the society and some youngsters, however nothing has been specifically decided yet. Still, there is a possibility that that will take place at the end of the next year and is definitely something the youth wants to take part in.

Even though it is slow, things are changing in Romania too and hopefully the youngsters won’t lose energy nor momentum.