Sunday 25th October 2015

The weekend of the 17th & 18th October 2015 saw a number of club members involved with our Annual J.O.T.A. Station using the callsign GB2JAM.

After several years of using different locations on Wirral, we returned this year to our Irby Cricket Club HQ at 2 P.M. on Friday 16th October to assemble all the kit. This started with the assembly of the clubs TriBand (10/15/20m) beam and rotator on top of a 12m Pump up mast. All went without a hitch really……. and as if that wasn’t enough, we then moved to assemble a second identical mast kindly loaned by Rufus (M0WMD). This carried a linked wire dipole for 40m (and 80m).

The space available to us at Irby on the cricket out field is huge and means these masts were well separated from each other to avoid interference. Two full and separate HF stations were then set up, each using an old faithful Kenwood TS 440 SAT at 100 W. There was also a TL 922 Linear available although this proved un-necessary.

By 6:30, all was done and ready for tests….. It was also time to move inside and warm up.. Irby in October does not have the hottest of climates but this year we were blessed with some lovely mild and dry weather which added to the ease of setting up and down on Sunday.

Our first contact was on 15M (21.279MHz) to V47JA in CALYPSO BAY on St KITTS..( I suspect it was warmer in the Caribbean than in Irby) fifteen minutes later our second contact was with P40JW (21.304MHz) on ARUBA Island off the coast of Northern Venezuela.

So the beam was working  !!!          [To view the following photos .. Click on the Photo and do the same to return to this report]

Later in the evening we spoke with our first JOTA Contact, on 20M (14.290 MHz). WW2BSA was a special event station at the MOUNT ALLAMUCHY SCOUT RESERVATION in Northern NEW JERSEY. This was possibly a slightly larger JOTA station than ours as they were expecting over 1000 Cub Scouts to arrive over the weekend.

During the weekend we made over 60 radio contacts and sometimes exchanged greetings with between 5 and 10 scouts at each contact.  ALL the Scouts, Explorer Scouts, (and Brownies and Guides) who attended at Irby went on the air.  Some of our more interesting contacts were with GB2GP at the National Scout HQ and Campsite near LONDON .. HB9S, the International Scout Bureau in GENEVA and a station in STOCKHOLM with the fabulous special event JOTA callsign of Sierra Charlie Zero Uniform Tango {SC0UT}

There was some good DX about as well with several openings into the CARIBBEAN and U.S. as well as URUGUAY, ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, and in another direction, NAMIBIA. A particularly pleasing contact towards the end of the weekend was with an ITALIAN station who spoke to several Scouts and Guides at our station and recorded the contact which he has now E-mailed to us for them to keep as a record of the event.

Big thanks go to everyone from WADARC who was so generous with their time and equipment and to Irby Cricket Club (Especially Paul) who allowed us to put together such a great event for the Scouts and our club members.

See you all again at JOTA 2016 on 14th – 16th October.

Simon (G6XHF)

And Assistant District Commissioner – BIRKENHEAD District Scouts.

Useful JOTA Links

UK Radio Scouting

Chester Oldfield Scouts

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