Saturday 18 October and Sunday 19 October saw me set up at the Gilwell Park Scout camp for the annual Jamboree On The Air.
This year was the first year that the Scout Radio & Electronics Service Unit (SRESU) had coordinated this event after 25 years of coordination by Garnet VK3MTA.
The whole weekend was great fun and the activities included Ham Radio, Morse Code, Canoeing, Bush Donuts, Making Electronic Kits, Morse Code, Billy Cart Derby, Radio Orienteering, Rocket Launchers, Archery, Remote Controlled Cars, Low Ropes Course, Radio Fox Hunting and The Radio Active Gauntlet.
My part was to run the VK3SCG ham radio activity base where I had 12 scouts at a time visit for 45 minutes and talk with other scouts via radio.
Most of our scout to scout contacts were made on 20m into New Zealand or Queensland.
After dinner on Saturday a few scouts came back to the shack and listened whilst Dean, VK3NDJ, made some DX contacts.
We had set up an Echolink node working into our portable repeater to assist us making contacts but the short duration of our QSO were not working well into Echolink.
I was using my FTDX100 for HF contacts and my Kenwood TM742 for local 2m contacts around the camp.
The antennas for HF were the on-site 3 element yagi for 10/15/20m and the on-site 40/80m dipole.
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