Glendora Emergency Response Communications

2008 JOTA WAS A BIG SUCCCESS!

Oct 27, 2008

Hello fellow hams!

If you missed this year's Boy Scout Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) , you missed a lot of fun and some great DX!

We had a very successful JOTA on Saturday, October 18, 2008 with 42 Boy Scouts showing up in uniform during the course of the day at the Sonrise Christian School soccer field in Covina. Luckily they didn't all come at once! The attached photos start off with the M-816 wrecker arriving at about 7:30 am. We used a G5-RV dipole and just hung it from the wrecker's hook and elevated the ends to about 18 feet, so it would be more of a flat dipole. That really paid off! Turns out the 20 meter band was very active this year! Our special event call sign was K6U (kilo six uniform) and we made consistent 5 by 9 HF contacts with Scout JOTAs in ALASKA, Yukon Territory, and Puget Sound Washington in the morning and Texas and Iowa during the afternoon as the ionic propagation switched from N-S to E-W later in the afternoon. We heard Japan but the ham on the other end had very poor English so we couldn't understand what he was saying. Richard ran the 2 meter station right in the cab of the truck and even had a QSO with the radio operator on the historic USS MIDWAY in San Diego. A fitting tribute to our military theme! Each Scout was able to communicate with other Scout JOTA's as well as 2-meter local contacts via the Telco and Catalina repeaters. We thank all operators who so so kindly communicated with us! Thanks to Scouters Jim Dowdle, KG6TQT and Dave Truax for making it all happen! See photo PDF story.

73,
Mark