Stutterheim, Eastern Cape
The Community Church Scouts in Bisho set plans in place to host a JOTA/JOTI event in Stutterheim. A parent’s farm was undergoing some renovation and was offered and it served the purpose well.
Scouts arrived throughout the afternoon on Friday 19 October 2019.
An invitation had been extended to the Scouts at Zwelitsha Scout Group who attended the camp. This was their first time at a JOTA/JOTI and a number of them have indicated that they are keen to get their ZU licences.
Once everyone had arrived they were divided up into groups (patrols) and Mr Lunga Nqini (ZS2LN) handled the opening ceremony and introductions.
The first base was a theory base covering the very basics of talking on the radio, ZS zones, and the phonetic alphabet. This was after a good run-around game and the message got across quite well.
Next up was a stalking game where the kids were sent off in patrols – with a radio – and told to hide from the others while talking to them on the radio. The idea was to try to find where the other patrols were without revealing your own hiding place.
In the evening the kids pitched their tents and did their own cooking. This was then followed by the evening base – electronics. Each patrol was given a breadboard kit with components to make a simple buzzer using a 555 timer chip. This proved quite challenging!
Instead of a normal speaker, they were given an earphone socket and a pair of earphones. The number of times they thought they had it only to find nothing was, well, entertaining. When they finally heard the buzzer they were in awe! We then made some simple CW keys and attempted to send morse code.
Saturday morning started with normal camp routine and breakfast of egg cooked in gem squash over a fire! Then it was time for the main event – some satellite work.
Satellites do not lend themselves to a rigid Scouting program and so had to be done on an “ad-hoc” basis calling kids away from their other activities for each of the passes.
Our position was not great either, and we had limited access to the actual flight path of the satellites. Only relatively high passes made it onto our radar as we were in a valley and surrounded by trees!
Many of the kids battled to be heard with many of them talking to softly, or turning the antenna as they spoke. We did get a ZU contact through to Andre ZS2BK made by Ambesiwe ZU2ASN but that was about it.
The focus this year was on JOTI – Jamboree on the Internet. We had a 3G hotspot provided by the Community Church in Bisho and we connected as many devices as we could! There were 3 laptops and about a dozen phones/tablets. Much of the time was spent on www.scoutlink.org where the kids were chatting to scouts from around the world.
In an attempt to maintain a link to amateur radio, we had the “Worked all continents” award for any scout who could establish contact with a Scout in each of the six continental areas. This proved more difficult that I had anticipated with very few South American countries online throughout the event. One scout ended up with 22 contacts, but none from South America.
The Bisho Hammies would like to thank Noel Hammond and the ZS6ZU Hammies for the donation of 3 dual band handheld radios and Amsat for the donation of three Amsat yagis for satellite work. Another thankyou goes to Andre Potgieter – ZS2ZA who also kindly donated an Amsat yagi to the group.
