This is our first TTT report, here is Fiodor IZ7YBG – someone know me from the 2016 Austrian summer camp, as well as from Friedrichshafen and crazy trips across Europe – taking the task of collecting the wide variety of YOTA activities, which the Italian group does across the country.
But, as this is the first Italian report, it’s important to write down “how we get here”, our
“little” but amazing history, we are proud of it, as everyone that trust in the YOTA
importance, and, more widely in the HAM RADIO is.
Before 2015, YOTA Italy was just a small group of Italian youngsters, from north, centre and
south, taking part to some YOTA summer camps; there wasn’t any kind of organization,
bond with the ARI (Italian ham radio society) and growing plan.
Between 2014 and 2015, Silvio IZ5DIY and Alex IV3KKW – you will know them for sure – they started to revolutionised the Italian idea of YOTA, being able to “look to the future” in the right way, despite of the bad ARI internal situation, clearly with no time for the YOTA world. Silvio and Alex – with the big help of OMs from Toscana – organized the 2015 YOTA summer camp; strange but true, at that time there weren’t so many youngsters, or to be precise, they weren’t GATHERED.
From the summer of 2015, our group has seen an amazing exponential grow, due several some important strategic activities:
- – Creation of a Telegram group to gather all the – already known – youngsters;
- – Continuous survey on QRZ.com and national ham radio forums, looking for new youngsters to add to our telegram group and to involve in YOTA Italy activities;
- – Meeting during an important national ham radio exhibition (Montichiari, Brescia), with brain storming activities and games to collect new ideas for the future;
- – Participation to the Friedrichshafen exhibition, using to hamcamp as suggested from the Austrian guys (we started to learn from the other country too); At the end of 2016, YOTA Italy counted around 50 members, off course just a 30 % of this big number was active, but, it has been a BIG GOAL, due to an improvement circle that was started from some oldsters like Silvio and Alex, but kept active and increasing tanks to the Italian YOUNGSTERS.
– The participation of the Italian team to the Austrian 2016 summer camp had in important effect on our group, we discovered new people in our country as well as outside, made new important and never-ending bonds, placing the foundation for our growth.
A big group of guys from the I3 region – Trento, Verona, Venezia, Udine areas – started to
gather some years ago. An amazing number of new youngsters – new as well as already
licensed – gets involved in ham radio and YOTA.
New activities took places from 2016 until now:
- – Participation to the YOTA DECEMBER MONTH, from personal and team stations, involving newbie, clubs license class students and scout guys;
- – Scout JOTA-JOTI activities and “open days” shared with scout groups to mutual exchange knowledge about ham radio and scout activities: they taught us how to communicate by flags and morse code and, we gave them some kits to build a simple CW key; beautiful time spent all together;
- – Participation to several national and international HF and VHF contests in teams;
- – Presence in main Italian national exhibitions;
- – Montecassino subregional camp, we all knew how much it has benn amazing! But, maybe, a specific article just for that subregional camp – maybe wrote by the organizers too – could be better;
- – Friendship made between youngsters and many oldsters across the country. Really important point to grow being supported be lot of people, that give always us lots of important life and technical notions;
- – Verona’s ARDF fox hunting – opened both to our youngsters and to local scouts – after a national VHF meeting, held in the big Verona’s ARI club;
- – Sota and VHF contest from mountain to gather more and more our youngsters, as well as the oldsters;
- – Several rally assistances, after attending a course – in the local radio club – to manage this particular kind of radio comm;
- – Team building social and relaxing activities like bowling, pizzas, birthday parties as well as funny trips during winter and summer holidays. Summarizing, the Italian group saw a big growth in the last two years, now, we can count about 70 members on our telegram group. We have a good affluence at our periodic meeting, like ham radio exhibitions, as well as contests and casuals visits to other youngsters due to work or please travels. The interest for the participation to the annual summer camps is growing and we try always to send new people, sure that there will be always other amazing opportunities for the rest of the group to gather with the international part of the YOTA group.
However, as whatever group of people/association, we had some troubles in our group too; sometimes we misunderstood – especially due to the use of chats, instead of real life interaction – the actions of each other, reaching the point to argue. But, what is important is that we managed to clear our minds and focus on the next goal, reconciling and, surprisingly, getting new power, as well as new people – both youngster and oldsters like Cristian IN3EYI – involved in our rise to the future.
We still have problems with our national society management, they know that we exist, but, maybe, they are too old to give us a real place, a real importance in their “system”. We continue to spread out the verb of YOTA “just” with the helps of local clubs and/or single enthusiast oldsters, but there isn’t a big common national interest for us, at the important level of the association. We rely always on the interest of someone, this is why, maybe, most of the members of the Italian YOTA group are in north Italy – especially around the club of Verona, which is doing a remarkable job – where the common interest for the ham radio and, thus, for the youngsters is higher.
This is an another situation that has to be strongly improved: 90% or more of the group is in north Italy. Just for example, I’m quite alone here in I7 Puglia area, 700 km south of the main centre of activity.
- – Make the centre and south clubs aware of the existence of YOTA, but we still need a big help from the national society management to do that.
- – Spread out the voice of YOTA more and more in the south, involving scout and intermedium and high school students;
- – Create events in the south, like meeting or presence to exhibition to show our existence;
- – Do activities like EM comms to show how to use radios with no mobile phone network with scout and students;
- – Introduction into antennas setup and necessary equipment to run a ham radio station
- – DIY projects as the one that were organized during the various YOTA Summer Camps
- – A good and interested audience could be found in scouts groups. A collaboration with them could be very productive and fun as well. Best 73’s de Fiodor de Palma IZ7YBG
