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Train the Trainer report – Netherlands – October 2019

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The youngsters who participated during YOTA 2019, are planning a meeting with the youth committee of the VERON. Here we will sit together and see what kind of activities we can organize together. There are some ideas about activities with youngsters. During YOTA we had the idea to organize an ARDF day for youngsters, but this will be discussed during the meeting.

 

After coming back from Bulgaria, a report was written about the week itself. This article will be published in the Electron, the magazine of the Dutch society VERON.

 

We helped preparing for the Jota-Joti where in the midday kids under 16 came in to send on the 2-meter band and solder. In the evening, youngsters above 16 came in to work on the 70 cm and 80-meter band. The next day, the youngsters had a PMR treasure hunt and made connections on 2 meters and HF.

Next to that, preparations started for the day of the radio amateur which is held the first Saturday of November. Here the youngsters have their own stand on the youth square to show/talk to others about YOTA.

 

The Dutch sub regional camp (Winter YOTA) is also coming up. This is organized from the 12th of December until the 15th. Because this is in December, the call PA6YOTA will also be available for participants to use. The location is Oosterhout, which is close to Breda in the southern part of the Netherlands. During the week a lot of activities will be planned, like a treasure hunt, intercultural evening, lectures and workshops. Also during the weekend, a blog will be written and updated on www.veron.nl and on www.ham-yota.com.

Train the Trainer report – Finland – January 2020

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December YOTA month 2019 in Finland

 

Since 2013 Finland has taken part in December YOTA month, and this year wasn’t an exception. The first DYM activity in Finland for 2019 was already on the first day of the month; on the 1st of December, when the radio club of the scout district of Southwest Finland, OH1AS started the activity as a part of their activity weekend in Liesan maja, Lieto. About a dozen of young radio scouts were on air. What a great start to DYM!

 

The next weekend, from 5th to 8th of December, was the turn for the activity weekend “workkimisviikonloppu” organized by SRAL’s youth team. This was the 3rd time the weekend was held at the OH5Z contest station. The participant amount for the weekend was 12, a little less than the year before. The weekend included making QSOs, a presentation about remote stations and a lot more!

At the best, ham hobby is about sharing aspects of the hobby and socializing around similar-minded people. The youngsters among the hobby are highly connected, and we think it has to be that way. That’s why we always have time for that on our camps as well. This year the weekend was at the same time as the Independence day of Finland, which meant we gathered to celebrate the day together in the evening!

 

This year on the activity weekend we had a guest, Tomi HA8RT from Hungary. Tomi participated in NOTA 2019 camp in Finland in the spring, and we thought that he would be a good companion and a superb operator due to his astonishing CW skills. With the help of him and the other operators, we made a total of about 3300 QSOs during the weekend!

 

On the whole of December, youngsters in Finland had the opportunity to use OH2YOTA callsign. Especially OH2FB, and OH3BKL operated the callsign for the rest of the month, well done! The total QSO amount Finland made in December 2019 was 5384, which was around 800 less than in 2018. Way to improve next year!

 

Nordic youth team meeting – preparing NOTA 2020

 

On the third weekend of December, four members of the Finnish youth team traveled to Uppsala, Sweden to plan the NOTA 2020, and Nordic youth co-operation. With the company of Youth team from Sweden, and youth coordinators of Norway and Iceland preparations got a rocket start. Hope to see you in Norway in easter 2020! More info can be found at ham-yota.com/nota2020

 

During the weekend, important documents were made, planning of the program was started, and a proposal for the NOTA graphical guide was introduced. The weekend also included a sauna, nearly frozen lake, Singstar, and great company. Nordic youth co-operation at its best!

 

Start of 2020 in Finland

 

A new year for the youth team in Finland starts during the weekend of week 3 when the youth team gathers together to plan the upcoming year. Also, roles will be divided so the activities will be even better organized. As Antti OH6VA left the youth team at the start of 2020 after multiple years of valuable work for the youth in Finland, it’s now time to welcome Mikael OH3UAF to the team.

 

Mikael was one of the members of Team Finland in YOTA summer camp 2019 in Bulgaria. He is great with video editing and photography and always likes to help with anything he can, which makes him a great addition to our team!

 

If you want to know about the other upcoming activities in Finland this year, make sure to check the Team Finland’s Train the Trainer report on the 15th of October. Otherwise, see you again on the 15th of March!

Train the Trainer report – Netherlands – January 2020

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Train the trainer report – The Netherlands – January 2020

On the 3rd of November 2019 it was the day of the radio amateur in the Netherlands. It took place in ‘de IJsselhallen in Zwolle. The day of the radio amateur is a big event and known by every radio amateur. There are multiple stands which look exactly like any other radio market. Next to that there were a lot of stands for information. YOTA also had one. A few youngsters stood with the stand, giving information about what YOTA is and how you can get in touch. Some youth magazines were also handed out.

The Dutch sub regional camp (Winter YOTA) was held from the 12th of December until the 15th. This weekend, youngsters from 10 different countries attended. Many of them discovered different new topics to the hobby. Also, many of them had the opportunity to make their first QSO on HF and UHF with the special callsign PA6YOTA. During this week, lectures and workshops were given and many youngsters got a new skill and knowledge which they can take home and share with the youngsters there. The blogs can be found on https://www.ham-yota.com/category/pa2019/.

During the YOTA December month, youngsters all over the Netherlands were busy making contacts with PA6YOTA and PB6YOTA. All together 5732 QSO’s were made with these two callsigns. With all the YOTA stations 129020 QSO’s were made and 2579 awards were downloaded, a great result! When youngsters were on the air, they also invited friends into their homes to show them what it is like to be a young radio amateur. Some youngsters also went to PI4COM in Rotterdam and PI4UTR in Utrecht to make QSO’s there. They shared techniques on how to handle a pile up, it was a lot of fun and of course we hope to make more QSO’s next year!

On the 8th of January, the youngsters who went to Bulgaria YOTA 2019 had a meeting with the youth and youngsters committee of the VERON. Here, we discussed what kind of activities we can organize and how we can approach the youngsters in the Netherlands. We now made an Instagram account for YOTA in the Netherlands, which you can follow by searching yota_netherlands or via this link: https://www.instagram.com/yota_nederland/?hl=nl

Train the Trainer report – Italy – January 2020

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TRAIN THE TRAINER REPORT: JANUARY 2020 EDITION

  • Maker Faire Rome

From 17th to 20th of October 2019 in Rome there was the biggest Maker Faire in Europe and YOTA Italia had the opportunity to participate presenting a new project to be used in case of emergency: a suitcase which provides you the ability to communicate and control remotely items using the satellite Oscar-100. The kit is composed of an ADALM Pluto, a small amplifier and a Raspberry-Pi, the kit is able of receive and transmit in full-duplex mode using a small dish and we hope to have it fully working during the next year.

During the same Faire we were also streamed live to the national radio broadcast station “Rai Radio 2” talking about amateur radio hobby and how to become an ham-radio operator. The faire was a great success and we had a lot of new young people involved in our team.

  • Pescara ham-faire

Since a few years it’s a habit of YOTA Italy to participate to Pescara Ham-faire. Also this year we went there with youngsters from all over the country: Andrea IU8HPE, Fiodor IZ7YBG, Matteo IU2GGL and Martin IN3IBW with his father Christian IN3EYI, ARI national manager coordinator for the ARI radio club, of which YOTA Italy is a part. Ham radio fairs are a functional way to show to the OMs that there is Youth in Hamradio and  that they care about the future. In this edition of Pescara we met Emanuele IU8MFH, who is licences but didn’t know about the YOTA world. He was very surprised when he found out because he didn’t think that something like YOTA could exist. He will surely participate to other activities in the future. We also distributed many leaflets to people who asked us about YOTA and they’ll talk about it to their sons and grandchildren. We had good results from the fair and even the OM were  very proud of us and hoped the YOTA project grows up more and more.

  • YOTA Sub regional camp in PA

A team of 7 Italian youngsters invaded this year’s winter YOTA camp in PA. We had a few difficulties to arrive and ended up there 4 hours late but we made it at the end! Surprisingly for the first time in YOTA Italy there were more girls than boys in the team. For two of the girls was the the first time being involved in a YOTA event. Claudia IN3HJX was very surprised from these experience. This was her impression: ” Winter YOTA was my first sub regional camp. I didn’t know what to expect at first, I didn’t know the other youngsters and I was a bit worried but I gave it a try, and I was right! Too bad it was so short… At the camp I made my first qso and I got closer to the Ham world, I met new friends from different countries and I’m still in contact with some of them. I even got the chance to build a QRM detector and I think that was one of the most interesting activities. The Dutch guy who was sitting beside me taught me how to do it and the result was pretty good. I would do it all over again. This was a great start to enter the Ham world! I’m even going to meet with a few other girls for a contest in January.”

We’re trying to involve new youngsters in this kind of events even if it can be difficult since some of them can be a bit shy at first. Many of us are already looking forward to subscribing to this year’s YOTA camps and hopefully also this time we’ll have some new participants in our team.

  • DYM

During tiìhis year’s DYM sine if the italian youngsters worked hard and managed to make 11.713 QSOs, a good result considering bad propagation and every day’s tasks. Moreover we had less operating youngsters compared to last year, but many of them had never used a YOTA special callsign before.

The two callsigns that we have had assigned were II4YOTA and II8YOTA.

We were active in many modes and bands (SSB, CW and FT8 in HF, VHF and QO-100 satellite).

Some of us took the occasion to operate from radio club stations, contest stations and other places. Alessandro IU4FNO even used it during Vecchiacchi contest. He says: “Vecchiacchi memorial day is a VHF&UP contest, held every year in the first weekend of December. Due to my university schedule, I managed to operate only for the last three hours, using my home station under II4YOTA. A total of 88 QSOs where made, quite good result considering my QTH and working conditions. I really enjoy VHF&UP competitions and using the YOTA special call added extra fun. Callers where intrigued by the strange suffix and many of them discovered the existence of YOTA and the DYM event.

We hope to have more VHF&UP contests worked by Italian Youngsters in the future, considering that some of them have a separate section for youngsters in their leaderboards. So yes! There is youth in Ham Radio… also above 50 MHz.”

During Christmas holidays we were active almost all day long and we didn’t stop till the 31st of December at 24:00 UTC. To communicate we used a Telegram group with all the interested youngsters. We also had, as last year, a Telegram Bot created by MarcoIU2DPM to reserve the callsigns and to check which calls were operating. We had a lot of fun and we are already looking forward to next year.

 

  • Kids Day

Two of our youngsters participated with their relatives to the kids Day the 4th of January.

A very interesting day for the kids and for the youngsters that help THEM. Unluckily we couldn’t organise anything big because this event is not very known in Italy and we decided to participate only the day before. Kids were very interested in this funny way of communicating and, who knows, maybe some of them will also start studying for the radio operator licence. Amelia IU5LVM, who participated with her cousin Jacopo, said:”It was very cool, even if I  was very tired after. I Found out that my cousin is a little pile up machine that can’t wait for the next kids day to come to participate again. I hope he will keep building interest for this hobby and take his licence soon.” This positive experience will surely be a good excuse to organise something bigger in the future. Hopefully this event will get more popular with all the photos that we posted on social medias. It’s a great opportunity considering that here you can’t operate without a licence, not even with a OM near you.

  • 40/80 contest

We didn’t do anything as big as previous years. Usually the youngsters would meet at a contest station and work together but this year some of them were at the subregional camp. Many youngsters still managed to do the contest by their self.

One of them is Carmelo IT9GHW: “An intense week of study seemed lighter than usual … I was waiting for the 40/80mt contest.

After reviewing the contest rules on ARI website, I turn on my ICOM IC-7300, setup the PC and configured QARTest  (a must have for every contest).

I wish I could run on single operator 80 meters but I had no chance to put up a reasonable antenna.

I officially started the contest at 13:06 UTC.

After 5 QSOs in SSB, S&P mode, I switch to RTTY, just to warm up a bit.

I kept on running until 18:54 UTC with a few breaks. In the meanwhile I switched role, S&P and RUN both in SSB and in RTTY, a few times until the skip is way too long to get some new italian station.

At 07:00 UTC the next day I resumed the contest. The competition kept running smoothly with a few breaks along the way. I completed the contest at 12:02 with 200 QSOs, 105 connected provinces and a raw score of 28665 points.

The 40/80mt contest is always a good opportunity to build some contest experience, many people consider this “national” contest a really easy one. This is not true, even a local competition can have some “difficulties”.

I’d like to take part of a team of young radio amateurs like me but both the distance between my QTH and the northern part of Italy (most of the YOTA guys are located there) and the the lack of Youngsters colleagues in the area, make it very difficult to happen.

I’d like to say thank you to Yota Italia group for letting me experience a more dynamic and exciting radio amateur activity.”

 

  • YL’s “Bande Basse” contest

On the 11th and 12th of January, the Italian Bande Basse contest was held. For the occasion was created a team of only YL of different ages and experiences, composed by Amelia IU5LVM, Lucia IU5IZQ, Simona IZ5IOZ, Nicole IZ3XAK, Claudia IN3HJX, Lucrezia and Paola (waiting for their callsigns).

This event was decided to take place at the A.R.I. Prato Radio Club located in the center of Italy at a reasonable distance from each participant.

What motivated us to pursue this initiative was the idea of finding and building an opportunity that would allow us to join together among Italian YLs, to get to know each other, have fun and learn together. That’s why we wanted to do a contest with a team of YL only!

To make it even more exciting, following a proposal by Roberto IK3TCH president of the A.R.I. Verona Radio Club, it was decided to create a “competition” in the “competition”, that was to create two teams, one of YL in Prato and one of OM in Verona, that would challenge each other till the last QSO!

To organize our challenger team’s contest in Verona was the young Alessio IU3LZN (licenced since last year). Several Radio Club’s members, Marco IU2DPM from Milan, Emanuele IU3GOW and Francesco IU3GNB from Verona took part to the challenge.

Once we had chosen contest, place and challengers, we took care of the organization, choosing a hotel not too far from the Radio Club and the catering for the meals.

The contest participants arrived from the evening of Friday the 10th until the morning of Saturday the 11th.

On Saturday morning there was a small visit to the city of Prato. Then just before the start of the competition a briefing took place where rules and regulations was reviewed and the team agreed on how to move during the contest. For the occasion we were given a pink sweater personalized with our name and the special call used for the occasion II5YL.

During the contest there were several pile up moments where we helped each other. The daytime coverage shifts were not rigidly fixed but everyone could work freely and friendly trying to always have at least two members of the team doing the contest at the same time. There was an exchange of advice given by the different Ham Radio experiences, there were those who had never done a QSO and those who had already done a lot of contests, those who knew the CW and those who didn’t. Among the many linking factors the differences and the meeting helped to build the group, favouring the growth of all of us!

During the night shift Paola operated in CW mode. Break time was really few because the adrenaline and the emotion of the contest gave us that charge to never give up to do QSOs and until the end the YL team gave it all!

The YL team made 589 QSOs while the OM team made 620 but the final score is still to be seen. Regardless of the result we all won because we all had a great time and the goal of unity seems to have been achieved!

Big thanks to A.R.I. Prato and A.R.I. Verona Radio Clubs who hosted us, the Regional Council of Tuscany and QSLitaly.it for the sponsorship and to all those who made this event possible.

  • Big success: reduced ARI national fee for youngsters!

After a long 5 years of fights the 2020 ARI fee finally included a discounted price for young ham operators up to 25 years, the fee is 50% of the normal price (39€ instead of 78€).

  • Future plans:

Like every year, a group of youngsters will meet in March at the Ham-fair in Montichiari and hopefully this time  we’ll see some new faces.

We are planning to do something from local radio clubs for the kids day will be held in June, with some games and activities to learn about the ham radio world.

There will probably be also some activities in schools, but nothing official yet.

We started by invading the PA19 camp and we look forward to send Italian operators to every camp during the 2020! Keep on rolling youngsters!

Train the Trainer report – France – January 2020

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I create a telegram group where we are now 13 guys (no girls for the moment). These youngsters are very happy to have been contacted to join that kind of group. They are motivated to enjoy the radio together, there are a lot of great discussions. We know the existence of some others youngs ops, but they haven’t joined the group yet for unknown reasons. The group has been created before the DYM to allow the good organisation of the activation and to maximise the pleasure of sharing the moment with other youngsters, even if we are all far from the others.

For legal reasons we had to respect a 15 days restriction for special event station activity where OnAir time were concentrate during Wenk-ends and holydays period. We manage to make some 2400 QSO’s, those who were very new really enjoyed their beginning behind the mike or the key, those who were interested by being the DX were surprised of the pile they generated and surprised about the success of their own little pistol stations. We also had an article to promote and encourage F stations to be on the air and to welcome the newcomers behind the TM19YOTA call.

For our media, the website is not yet online, we are trying to move on that project to put it online very soon. Some adjustments with the society are needed but we hope it will soon move forward.

After some discussions with the society and the group, it appears that it would be great to organise an event with the youngsters in France who won’t be able to go in Croatia for the SummerCamp. We are reflecting about a 24h contest weekend who could be good to share a great radio time, an eyeball meets to know each other.

That’s a summary of what’s happen here since October.

Next months objectives :

-Website hosting discussion with society

-Media strategy discussion

-RREF article in February

-Organisation of a YOTA F weekend

-Beginning of the organisation of the F team for the 9ASC !

Train the Trainer report – Lithuania – January 2020

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ACTIVITIES SINCE YOTA 2019

  • Kaunas Technology University radio club received new premises to expand and deploy new antennas.
  • New, more powerful DMR hotspot has been deployed in Vilnius to increase the coverage and more users have joined.
  • New 70cm repeater that was donated, has been installed in Vilnius.
  • Even more students joined the Kaunas Technology University radio club
  • New 2m WebSDR receiver in Vilnius
  • Station operation during december YOTA month

PLANS FOR NEXT 2 MONTHS

  1. Move Kaunas Technology University radio club to new premises.
  2. Finnish making the DMR hotspot for Kaunas by increasing TX power and providing better antennas.

LONG-TERM PLANS

  1. Improve the new Kaunas Technology University radio club by building new antennas and making new members to participate in the contests.
  2. Continue making people interested in ham radio.

Links

 

Train the Trainer report – Spain – January 2020

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Hi everyone! Another TTT report from the YOTA EA Team.

During October we enjoyed being on the front page of the national ham radio magazine, which caused some movement in social media, talking about YOTA camp, and the recent announcement of the Youth Committee in Iberradio fair. We also started to give some shape to the December YOTA Month in EA, organizing the system to allow everyone to get on the air, without being the same station in the same mode/band. Also, requesting the 2 callsigns that were used during December: EF4YOTA and EG2YOTA. We also participated on the JOTA-JOTI with 2 callsigns: EG1JAM and EG2JAM. (Maybe more, those are the ones we’re aware of)

November had also great news in the magazine: Lucía (11 y/o) had just got her callsign (EA1FDO). Apart from that, we were finally prepared for the DYM with a lot of enthusiasm.

The results of the DYM are: 4732 QSO with EF4YOTA and 1185 QSO with EG2YOTA. We’re very proud as some kids could try Ham Radio, and one of them has recently passed the exam and is waiting for a callsign.

We’re preparing some surprises for this summer. If everything goes well, we will be able to announce it soon.

Until next report,

73 from Spain!

Train the Trainer report – Norway – January 2020

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In December 2019 the Nordic youth teams had a meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, where we discussed our next camp, NOTA 2020, and worked on other issues related to Nordic youth cooperation. The social aspect of the meet-up was also important, and we of course spent time in the sauna. The meeting had attendees from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.
As of now, we are in the process of planning a Nordic youth camp here in Norway. NOTA 2020 will be held at Camp Killingen south of Oslo, and we invite participants from all the Nordic countries, in addition to a few others from IARU R1, to come to Norway this Easter for a great experience. More information about this event will soon be posted to www.ham-yota.com/nota.
We hope that this camp will spark the interest of more youngsters here in Norway, and help us build a better youth group.
The Nordic youth teams have a common Instagram, @nordicsontheair.
For young Norwegian radio amateurs, there is a Facebook group called “Unge radioamatører Norge”
73 de LB4IH Trond Tynnøl

Train the Trainer report – France – October 2019

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For the past two months, few things happen in France. Back from Sofia, I wrote first a CR for the REF society and the administrators who were convinced about the fact that what they did for me this year has to continue the next few years with me but not only, with the objective to see a YOTA France born. Then I have the ascent of the REF to write an article for RadioRef Mag, who is the only and the most read by the French amateur community radio magazine. At mid-October I met F5DJL President of REF and F1AGR who is the “coordinator” of the youth activities. I made two proposal who were quickly accepted. First, creating a website/page in French with goals to explain what YOTA is to the 15-26 population of F licenced, and to let know to the French amateur community that there are some youngsters involved in this hobby in their own country. The other goal of this page is to allow everyone who is interested by YOTA to get directly a contact with someone who knows what he is talking about (not someone who’ll ask someone else and then no answer). The last goal comes with the second initiative I took, create a Telegram YOTA France, a unique group, not one on WhatsApp, not one on snapchat, a unique Telegram group where all Youngsters from France can start to speak and organise events together (so inform that there is a formal group of discussion for those who don’t think that it could be exist or don’t find the person who can enter it in the group). If they are interested by the international part of the YOTA Group, of course they’ll be added on the Gen Group.

So, after LZ YOTA :

-CR to the REF

-Article

-Meeting with the REF

-Building the website (simple but functional)

-Creating the unique known place of chat to bring together the France youngsters

After that, using every social media and our Website to encourage everyone interested to be added to the group. It’s just starting. By the way for the next activities, we will be active as TM19YOTA, I’ll represent Youngsters in the French contest commission at the end of November, and I have been contacted by F4GKR to be with him in Serbia next year for the IARU meeting. For the Website and the Group, I hope that before December it will be operational. I think that this is doable.

Just for information : REF has a list of potential 26 youngsters in France (in age of being selected). We have no information about those who are in age but not in the REF list.

Best regards, CU perhaps in the WE during the WW, Tom F4HWS.

Train the Trainer report – Austria – October 2019

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In the last 2 months important achievements were made for youth in Austria. The support from our society OEVSV has greatly increased. After we put lots of effort into convincing them of the importance of youth.

At the general assembly of the society, youngsters were present to put pressure on the representatives of each region of Austria. They all agreed to organise youth activities with their regional youth coordinators and support the youngsters already in their regions with any activities they want to organise. Additionally, the youth coordinator on the national level secured a budget specifically for youth activities. It shows that slowly the OMs are realising that youth is the way forward.

Some other important achievements were also made:

There will be an OEVSV online learning platform so that youngsters can learn for their license exams online when and where they want to. Before we often had the problem that youngsters were interested but it was too difficult for them to learn for the exam because there were no courses near them etc. and with time, they lost interest. This online learning platform will solve this problem. On the platform there will be video lessons, but the users will also be able to ask questions and get feedback on their progress.

The youth team in Austria will create a website, which is independent from the website of the OEVSV website. There was a youth section on the society website before but that was difficult to find and there was not a lot of content on there. We want to make the website “by youngsters, for youngsters” so all the content on the site is made and written by youngsters. We have lots of great ideas for things we could do with the website. We will also make social media channels, to start off we will make an Instagram account and do our best to upload content on a weekly basis. A goal like uploading content every week is also a good motivator to go out and do something. All of our platforms will be named YOTA-Austria.

Our plan is to create a stronger youth community in Austria, at the moment very few youngsters actually know each other. Getting the support from the heads of the individual regions was key to connecting youngsters across Austria more. First of all, we will do some activities to bring the existing youngsters closer together. Once we have a group of motivated and active youngsters, we can start focusing on getting new youngsters interested in the hobby. For instance, going to schools and universities etc.

The highlight of the coming year will no doubt be a sub-regional camp in Austria. After organising the YOTA summer camp in 2016, enthusiasm about the camp was very high within the society. Now with the sub-regional camp we have the opportunity to organise a camp again. We hope to make it a large sub-regional camp with lots of cool activities and workshops.