JOTA 2007, Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands

It was my first JOTA (Jamboree On The Air) ever – I just never considered spending a weekend with kids, transceivers and antennas. When Roel PE1RF asked me to help them out, I thought I’d give it a try. To be honest, I expected it to become one big disillusion. Modern kids don’t care much about radio, I argued. They care more about computers and chat programs. Not the kids of the Osborne Scouting Group, however. No JOTI there (Jamboree On The Internet), only JOTA. Fine with me. They can chat at home all year long.

We used a variety of transceivers and antennas, so we could use any band between 80 meters and 70 centimeters. Beams, full squares, rotary dipoles, bunches of long wires, you name it. The scouts had engineered a 28 meter high tower, completely out of wood. Perfect!

After explaining to the kids how HF signals travel, they talked to many European stations. The youngest kids were happy with listening. They were real chatterboxes, but became completely silent when you put a microphone in front of their faces. A good tip for parents, maybe? In total, we logged more than 325 QSOs.

Filters made it possible to use more bands at the same time

Listening, listening, listening..

Hello Japan? It’s me!

Our youngest HAM

Taking down the towers

Hey, I might be a girl, but I can disassemble a rotary dipole

Stupid coax. I hate coax.