Eager to build your own satellite ? A dream has become true for several dozens of youngsters at the SatCamp. Take an Arduino, a 3-D printer, a bit of electronics, a small radio and programming: “MySat” is ready for launch! MySat-1 starts with measuring its environment (temperature, air pressure, humidity) and sending it back to the ground over radio. MySat-2 is going further with 3-D attitude determination, GPS localisation, Solar panels and the Lesley Experiment. MySat-3 will gp even higher … but pssst, this is a surprise!

The UBA, in collaboration of the Euro Space Center in Belgium, organises summer camps since 4 years. Find here the success story of this experience. (published in UBA’s magazine CQ-QSO 09-10 2019, the article is in both Dutch, and French)

Read the article

Feel free to contact on6ti@uba.be for using this in your own country.

Since the 2018 YOTA Winter Camp in Johannesburg, South Africa, several initiatives have taken place in Belgium. We’d like to think this is because of the inspiration we gathered from hanging out with HAM’s our age and hearing each other’s ideas.

The greatest success story is that Ben ON6FBR and Ward ON8WR were received by the board of the national radio league of Belgium, the UBA (Royal Belgian Amateur Radio Union). We discussed what we did in South Africa and shared our ideas of what needed to be done to lift youth participation in Belgium to a higher level. Our words were well received, as the UBA responded that they are open to all ideas considering youth participation and will discuss all propositions in order provide funds to carry out these ideas.

During the R1 UHF and up contest, the OT5A team – operating as OT5A/P – involved HAM radio operators as young as 13 years old. Almost half the contest team was younger than 30 and was very active on the radio. This involvement showed that age doesn’t matter and may even be a benefit to the operations. Especially during buildup, the help of 20-year old HAMs is appreciated among the more “experienced” operators. Read more

Since submitting our last report on November 2nd, there was not a lot of progress in youth ham radio in Belgium.

Much like our colleagues from all over the world, we are participating in the YOTA activation month of December, with callsign ON4YOTA. Operators aged 14 to 24 have made contacts in SSB, CW and digimodes. The logs are still being collected to be sent in to keep track on the YOTA website. Our goal is to make contacts on every HF band by the end of the month, being mostly active during the weekends.

Makerlab “De Shack” – discussed in our last report – has had several successful openings in the weekends. We also participated in the national science celebration day with a special opening and are happy to announce we’re now officially recognized as a STEM-academy (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

We also continue to look for younger amateur radio operators to participate in the YOTA activities and hope to find enthusiastic participants for next year’s summer event. We’re brainstorming on how to organize an information session/activity of some kind in the spring to gather interested youth.  Read more