Wow, what a fun DYM 2022!
We had about 37 operators from not just the United States, but all over the world. For the first time ever, we welcomed many operators from outside of the U.S. that not only were amateurs in their respective countries, but had U.S. callsigns, meaning they could run remotely into U.S. stations using the K8* callsigns without violating any CEPT agreements. With many youths hooked up with the Remote Ham Radio Youth Program, this made it very easy for them to get on the air.
We were active on pretty much all modes, including satellites, with KE8RJU and others activating the satellites when necessary. In the past, we had many repeat volunteers to operate the callsigns, but this year saw many new licensees and youth willing to participate. We definitely advertised more this year that we were looking for more new operators, which definitely helped our cause to get more youth on the air. This increase of the number of operators from different areas of the United States and the world made it difficult to schedule operators to operate at particular times. Therefore, we pretty much just sent schedules out via Google Sheets to the interested operators that wanted to participate, making the process more automated and up to the youth operators on when they wanted to get on the air.
It was fun to get to know many of these youths that have the same interests as me, and I can’t wait for this year’s DYM 2023.
