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!
