Hi everyone,

here is my JOTA report.

Thanks to Charlie VY1CC/VE3XCC, George VY1GP, Terry VY1MAP, Allen VY1KX, and James VY1JC, we were able to provide a multifaceted radio experience to the 6 scouts and 6 scouters that took part in last weekend's JOTA at the Research Forest (North Klondike Hwy, south of the Takhini Hotsprings Road).

Together with the scouts, James and I set up two HF antennas on Saturday, when it was still overcast and plenty of snow was on the ground: we hung up a 40m long horizontal endfed multiband wire antenna and constructed a "lazy L" wire antenna for the 20m band, consisting of a 5m vertical wire portion suspended from a fishing pole and a 5.5m long horizontal leg, running at a height of about 1m above ground and tied to the nearest tree. The end-fed wire antenna was connected to the 3000 Ohm side of a transformer, provided by Allen, and the "lazy L" antenna was directly connected to a coax cable. The 50 Ohm side of the transformer and the coax cable from the 20m antenna were in turn connected via my FC-707 antenna coupler to an FT-891 transceiver "in a box" provided by George.

After lunch we did a workshop on how to use walkie-talkies (FRS radios), since the group now has a set of 6 of those, and then the youngsters went out doing things like treasure hunting while using their new radios.

In the afternoon we had a workshop on how to use the fox hunting receivers - this year we used two transmitters and two integrated antenna/receiver units provided by Terry, but we also showed and explained one of the homebrew tape measure antennas that Charlie had left us from last year, and 3 of the scouts told us about that time, when they took part in the fox hunt using those antennas. Following the workshop we did a short trial fox hunt (with the transmitters close by) before moving on to HF, with Allen joining us on 80m and providing plenty of opportunities for the scouts to take turns at the mic (all but one talked to Allen) - some of the youngsters sure are masters of "one-word-conversations", but Allen was not deterred. :)

In the evening we tried 20m and clearly heard a station in Yakima, WA, in QSO with another station that we could not hear, as well as N8A, self-described as a "fire prevention week special event" station, calling CQ and making quite a few connections, but we did not manage a QSO ourselves.

Charlie VE3XCC tried to reach us from Ontario, while Rob VE7RBE and Neil VE7TBN tried to reach us from their JOTA location on the BC Sunshine Coast, and while I was able to hear Rob and Neil taking to each other, and they heard me call at times, conditions were not good enough for a connection in either direction. We all tried 40m, as well, but no luck there, either. Coordination of band hopping was done via

Several of the scouts and scouters then used my Baofeng via the 146.88 repeater to talk with Charlie who was connected via Echolink. Those conversations stretched out (which is a good sign), but we were eventually reminded by Michael VY1MGS that the repeater was needed for the net... :)

The 146.88 repeater is connected via IRLP or Echolink to Sunday morning's Trans Canada Net on VHF, and I was quick and managed to get VY1DX checked in as the first station that morning, telling everybody in the net that we were participating in the Jamboree on the Air and doing a fox hunt.

We conducted two longer fox hunts that morning, the first one started with me going for a walk and hiding the transmitters on the ground, lightly covering with leaves and needles. This trick delayed the hunters for quite a while, but they eventually figured out what they had to do and found both transmitters. For the next fox hunt two of the scouters took care of hiding the transmitters, and one of them kept the transmitter on his arm and tried hard to evade the roving hunters but was eventually found out, while the other one hid the transmitter in a tree stump and covered it up. The hunters eventually gave up looking for it. :)

Around noon we packed everyting up - by then the snow had almost disappeared and the sun was out.

The scouts are interested in a workshop. They would love to build some fox hunt receivers and antennas. The units Terry lent us operate on 260MHz (1.15m band), by the way.

More at the next meeting...

73

Yuuri VY1YU