Train the trainer

The YOTA Subregional Camp in DL finally took place! In Mid of March 60 Youngsters met and spent a great weekend  together. A daily report can be found on the website, see  https://www.ham-yota.com/category/subregional-activities/ . This report will focus on our notes and organizing ideas behind the camp. It was mainly organizied by some former YOTA-Camp participants and voluntary youth workers of the DARC

Since we (the organisors) also wanted to include the international character of ham radio, we apply for a Subregional YOTA Camp and therefore also invited international youngsters. To not scare away German youngsters (e.g. younger ones), who might be afraid of a camp held in English, we decided to keep German as the main language, but with the opportunity to also have all program points in English, at least with an interpretor.

The amount of pupil youngsters in DL is quite high, so had to find a suitable date for them. School holidays aren’t harmonised, depending on where you live, you can have different holiday dates than others. Therefore the camp was just hold on one weekend.

The place for the camp should be the headquarter of the DARC in Baunatal, the accomodation was the Hotel owned by the DARC (we still had to pay for it, but we did get a discount). Due to the most capacity for everyone in the Hotel in Baunatal, the best suitable date was mid of March.

For advertising the event, we used several platforms: This includes promoting the camp on the DARC website, post on the social media accounts of the DARC and YOTA as well as reposting it, writing a general email to all young DARC members, advertising in the CQDL magazine (German ham radio magazine) and also directly contacting youngsters. It actually worked well since the camp was completely full and we also got a high number of participants from Germany itself.
Since we didn‘t like the idea of first come first serve, we decided to first went for a conditional registration, with a final acceptance of participants after the deadline. The idea behind that was mainly to avoid to many big youth groups from e.g. the same local club (since this tend to block a good get-to-know-each-other with everyone). We didn‘t had this szenario, but we had a few to many youngsters so we just used lottery to make a decision who get accepted.

For the programme we just followed two simple ideas: one was to have informative parts, the other was to get youngsters with same interests together. We therefore came to the following schedule:

Friday (at Hotel)

• arrival until afternoon
• welcoming and YOTA presentation
• round of introductions (every participant)
• dinner and intercultural evening

Saturday

• breakfast (at Hotel)
• drive to DARC Headquarter and short welcoming
• seperating into three groups; each group attended three events: CQDL magazine editorial department / QSL bureau /  general information about DARC Headquarter
• lunch at Headquarter, afterwards walk to DARC radio centre
• introduction of workshops (see below) and workshops
• dinner, afterwards continuing workshops
• drive to Hotel

Sunday

• breakfast (at Hotel) and drive to DARC radio centre
• workshops
• lunch, closing ceremony and goodbye

Each participant should decide on his/her own which workshops he/she wanted to attend. If there was a free time slot, everyone was invited to go to the shack. At any time there was a advisor in the shack, so that also unexperienced youngsters could go there. Another possibility during a free time slot was to go to one of the chill out areas. The idea behind this was that while realxing in on of the beanbags, you can easily talk and get in contact with another youngster next to you. It turned at that this worked pretty well, at the end of the camp everyone has spoken to nearly all other participants and therefore got to know a lot of other hams around his age.

Some workshops where held (spontaniously) several times, since collasions were unaviodable. The workshops were held by the participants themselves. The advantage behind this is to give the more experienced youngsters the opportunity to show their knowledge and on the other hand side to give the others the opportunity to learn from other youngsters, following the motto „youngsters for youngsters“.

Time flew by and soon the camp was over again. However, many have already said to take part in another amateur radio event. We hope and look forward to seeing more youngsters at such events soon.

Anyone is more than welcome to share any comments or questions with us! If you want to contact us directly, feel free to contact us also via ham-yota@darc.de

73, the organizing team

Swedish team report ”After YOTA 2018”

What have we done since last report?

NOTA 2019

NOTA, Nordics On The Air, a local IARU R1:s youth camp. In 2018, the first NOTA camp where held in on Hemsön, a small Island in Sweden, something that now have continued on into a larger cooperation between even more countries.

This year the Finnish team was the main organiser of this event, and boy what a fantastic work hey had done! For us in the Swedish team, this camp stared with roadtrips to the ferry over from Stockholm to Turku, with a second roadtripp to the campsite. We did arrive a bit earlier then the others, so we helped our fellow Nordics with the station and antennas.

When all the other participants had arrived to the camp, we had some teambuilding activities and finished the day with an intercultural evening, just like in any regular YOTA-camp. A lot of people to get to know and many different things to try from many different counties.

During the next two days we had the opportunity to listen to interesting presentations, try ARDF, activate a OHFF-station, build fruit-keyers, of-air-contest and most importantly: SAUNA!

In conclusion, the camp was very giving and made it possible to create a lot of new contacts and friends all around Europe.

After the camp we have now slowly started working with the Nordic courtiers for nest years NOTA, and only time will tell how that will work out, but I think it looks good!

Meetings and planning

We have had a lot of meetings with our youth-section in SSA where we both have discussed what we have done and what we want with the rest of the year.

What are we working with right now?

Weekend camp

We are planning a national camp for youngsters combined with older hams to booth exchange knowledge and to keep in contact with our friends all around our long country.

Planning for YOTA

Preparations for the Swedish participation for this yeas YOTA have started, and we are right know looking in to who are going to be participating

That is the status with the Swedish team right now. A fun start of the year, and a lot of fun left to do.

73 de Team Sweden

Ham exams took place in February. Four students of our course gain courage and managed their Novice class. Another three members of OM3KFF upgraded themselves to Extra class. Now, we will have more time for practice and also we are going to start Morse code lessons.

We also use contests for training of beginners, mainly SSB and RTTY. We did part time easy operation in CQWW SSB, Mexico RTTY, CQ WPX RTTY. CQ 160m SSB, ARRL SSB and CQ WPX SSB are following soon.

I gathered participants for summer YOTA camp in Bulgaria who replied public call. After discussion with youngsters and their parents, we agreed a new team leader (Bety OM1DP).

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…how do you explain it in a few short sentences?

Amateur radio is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. 

OK team February report

During the winter we have some interesting contests in OK. So we were sure to take part in them. First was 2m Christmas contest where OL18YOTA made huge success by taking 4th place in Adult Multi category, Martina will tell you more. In February there is 2m/70cm QRP contest. Honza has really adventurous story from this contest. So keep reading.

CHRISTMAS CONTEST 2018

Under a callsign OL18YOTA we took a part in the Christmas contest.
Contest was on 26th December, in two parts from 08.00 – 11.00 and 12.00 – 15.00 UTC.
With the ICOM IC-7600, TR 144 H, PA-800W and 2 x 10 el. Yagi antenna we did 204 QSOs. Best DX was DL1KFS with 838 km. This number of QSOs brought us the 4th place in the Multi category 144MHz. For some of us it was the first time in Christmas contest and also the first longer contest.

Martina OK2YLQ

WINTER QRP CONTEST 2019

One of the best opportunities for real men is the annual Winter QRP contest held every year on 1st Sunday of February. The contest starts at 9:00 UTC and consists of two separate two-hours periods – first on 70 cm and second on 2 m bands. Only 10 W power output is permitted, so the best way how to win the first place (awarded by the little „snowman“ statuette) is participation from the highest hill you can find in your neighborhood. But imagine, that it’s winter time and in Czech republic there is normally about approximately two meters of snow cover in the mountains!

Two teams of youngsters decided to participate this tough event this year – Martina OK2YLQ (17) took part from home and tried to give some points to as many portable stations as possible, and Honza OK1JD (24) made a choice to take part from the Velka Destna hill (1115 m asl) with intention to reach at least one of the first three places in each category. Here is his story:

„Sometimes in December I made a choice to take part in the Winter QRP contest on VHF/UHF. And because I have never participated this competition before, I didn’t realise that portable operation in winter from mountains is not so easy as I imagined. So I decided to visit the highest hill nearby – Velka Destna (asl 1115 m). I persuaded also my friend Martin (he is not a ham) to come with me, because I needed someone to help me with all the necessary equipment – FT-817, batteries, 6 el and 10 el yagis, tent, shovel, and so on.
Our little expedition started at 7 am when we packed the car and in 40 minutes we reached the parking place in 900 m asl, 3,5 km far from the top of the hill. First three kilometers were quite easy. The „road“ went through the forest, so the 80 km/h wind (which we expected according to the weather forecast) was not a problem so far. But the last 200 meters to the top were a real hell – every second step we falled down into the snow cover so deeply, that it was very physically difficult to stand up again, especially with heavy backpacks. Aprx. 30 minutes before contest we started to build the tent and both antennas. In the strong freezing wind it was not so easy and we finally started our CQ´s almost 40 minutes after the beginning of the contest!

Because of bad propagation, short antennas, terrible FT-817 (it is really not a TRX for a real contesting HI), icing and of course because of the lack experiences with this contest (it was our first participation) we reached only 24 QSO´s on 70 cm and 52 QSO´s on 2 m. So the result was a far far away from our expectations (we wanted to manage 40 QSO on 70 cm and minimally 65 QSO on 2 m).

Nevertheless the most important thing than number of QSO´s is the excellent feeling that we managed this hard challenge and even when the nature is against you, you can deal with that and you overcome yourself. Looking forward the W QRP 2020!

Honza OK1JD

How to explain amateur radio

Explaining amateur radio in a few sentences can be quite challenging. Here are a few ideas collected from german youngsters:

“We use radios to call out into the whole world, waiting for a response from someone. We don’t care at all about who is coming back, we’re excited about who is answering and where our signal was received. We might even get an answer from countries of which we don’t know much about.”

“It’s comparable with a random chat with someone around the world. But the main point is that we use our own communication system with radios and antennas, so we’re completely independent of the internet, mobile or telephone network.”

“As radio amateurs we deal with a lot of different topics from natural sciences, e.g. satellite radio, contacts through the world with less power or electronic self-building projects.”

A possible counter-question to why we still concern ourselves with amateur radio these days is

“Why is horse-riding still a popular hobby, if there are cars, trains and airplanes?”

Besides all the colloquial explaining, it might be still the best idea to actually show, what ham radio is. A possible way to do so is to introduce it through school or local youth activities, e.g. a small fox hunt, some on-air-activities or a classical introductory course to soldering.
As an example: This was just done by an active radio club (DARC E09 near Hamburg) where they organized some activities for an open-door day in the mid of February at a school in their town.

TrainTheTrainer-report: Update February

We‘re finally looking forward to our Subregional Camp in Baunatal in March! During the last two months we focused on everything concerning the camp.

Besides a lot of organizing points, we also tried to advertise our camp as well as possible, so that nearly every youngster knows about it. This includes: promoting the camp on the DARC website, post on the social media accounts of the DARC and YOTA as well as reposting it, writing a general email to all young DARC members, advertising in the CQDL magazine (German ham radio magazine) and also directly contacting youngsters.

It actually worked well since the camp is completely full and we also got a high number of participants from Germany itself.

Besides the planned activities for all youngsters, we want to use the chance to get to know the German youth and try to figure out, what they think about youngsters in amateur radio and what kind of youth activities they’re interested in. Together with them and depending on all youngsters preferences, we want to find a strategy, how we can improve the youth situation in general.

You want to know more?

Have a look at https://twitter.com/darc_ajw as well as https://www.darc.de/der-club/referate/ajw/

Feel free to contact us via ham-yota@darc.de !

Here is our report no. 3. And pictures can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ju1YP6T8Py4KxF-IpiRpkyA9gpnm1cAW?usp=sharing

Mail can be sent to nota@ham-yota.com or oh2fkx@pupu.li 

Also our Instagram is @nordicsontheair

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Next two months won’t only make a big difference for young Finnish hams, but it will also be a step ahead for whole Nordic European amateur radio community! As we have mentioned before in December Train The Trainer report, we are organising a sub-regional YOTA-camp, NOTA (Nordics On The Air) In Finland.

The camp, which was held in Sweden last year, will happen in Southern Finland this April from 19th to 22nd. The Programme of the event will be similar to YOTA camps including, for example, beginner-friendly radio orienteering, working from OH2YOTA, popular intercultural evening and of course, sauna, the Finnish way of having conversations!

Even though the camp is mainly meant for Nordic youngsters, we also welcome people from everywhere else in Europe! Be quick, we have a limited amount of places for participants and the sign up closes on February 24!

In the next two months, Finnish youth will be represented in the spring event and biannual meeting of Finnish Amateur Radio League. As usual, youngsters will be taking part in the event as well as helping in organizing it. Also, amateur radio hobby will be advertised in a couple of fairs during the end of winter and spring. In later 2019, we will be organizing more camps to get the youngsters better into the community.

Biggest problems in getting new youngsters are usually in them, people just aren’t interested anymore or on the other hand don’t have either time or resources for the hobby. In Finland, we have a great experience in recruiting new people to the hobby. How we describe the hobby to a youngster goes something like this: Amateur radio is about being international, making contacts with other radio amateurs all over the world, and of course, making new friends. These are not the only things that this hobby has to offer, there is something for everyone!

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73

Kati OH2FKX

Activities

Seminar

With the collaboration of Addis Ababa University, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a seminar has been organized which was presented by Ken Claerbout (K4ZW). In this seminar, an overview of last December’s HF propagation study of the 1.8 MHz and 3.5 MHz presented. Attendees have also gained awareness about aspects of HF radio propagation, the unique challenges of the 1.8 MHz and 3.5 MHz bands, lessons learned, and technology available to improve reliability.

Training

For the last couple of months, we have focused more on equipping the new youngsters with the necessary skill and knowledge that would help them to become a better amateur radio operator. Currently, the new youngsters can perfectly operate on SSB and FT8 modes.

Workshop

We have organized a small workshop that emphasized on creating awareness about amateur radio. In this workshop, an overview of the Ethiopian Amateur Radio Society (EARS) presented and the attendees have also visited the society’s only club station, located at Addis Ababa University.

Plan for the Next Two Months

• Recruiting new youngsters
• Kit building

Thanks for Reading!

The Ethiopian Amateur Radio Society (ET3AA)

February 2019

In the past few months, a lot has happened with Train the Trainer in the USA.  Our main focus these past few months has been the YOTA month and what we call “CQ Santa.”  CQ Santa is where we set up a station at a local hardware store and let kids of all ages talk to Santa over the air.  This year, fourteen kids got to talk to Santa and tell him what they wanted for Christmas, along with any questions they had about him or his reindeer.  Our plan is to do this in the coming years as well.

YOTA month was slower than we expected, but we were able to make over 1000 contacts.  Many of these contacts were made by young hams helping kids and kids at heart (a.k.a. adults) get on the air for the first time and experience amateur radio.  There is nothing like the feeling a kid gets when they call CQ for the first time and someone answers them from another country, or even just another state.

One other thing has contributed to Train the Trainer.  Faith Hannah (AE4FH and the author of this report), Hope (KM4IPF), and their dad James (WX4TV) did a four-day DXpedition to the Dry Tortugas (112 km off Key West, Florida in the USA) using the callsign N4T.  During this, we were able to educate around five people in person about amateur radio.  One of these people was a ham that was camping.  He heard us on the air and went scouring the island to find us and ask us what we were doing.  Eventually he found us and, after explaining what was going on, we got him on satellite for the first time ever.  He was extremely excited to have talked to someone through a 10 cm by 10 cm cube flying through space.  Most of the encouraging of youngsters that we did was talking to them on the air.  We were able to work around ten kids from all over the USA and Mexico.  The girl from Mexico that we worked was excited about talking to another girl.  This contact gave me a chance to encourage her to pursue the hobby.  Seeing that she was having trouble understanding English over the radio, I talked to her in Spanish when I could to help her out.  After all, that could have been her first time on the air.

In the future, we plan to continue our YouTube channel Ham Radio (dot) World, where we have been able to inspire people of all ages to get their license.  We are also considering a YOTA day, which was described in the last Train the Trainer report.  In the next few years we hope to have a YOTA summer camp in the USA.  We plan to have events throughout the year where we set up a station and allow anybody to get on the air for the first time.  We also plan to spread the word of ham radio by going to hamfests and encouraging people to get active on the bands.