The annual Scout & Guide Jamboree On The Air is coming soon. The third full weekend in October has been a feature on my calendar for a very long time. I remember as a cub scout playing in the elevator at the Box Hill TAFE campus on Watts St in Box Hill instead of working other scouts via radio.
It did however start my interest in radio and a few years later I was back at JOTA at the 1st Mont Albert Scout Hall using the call sign VK3SBH with John Brady. I don’t think John kept his interest going but he did have a very nice FT707 that I recall.
Enough of the past, this JOTA I am back up at Gilwell Park scout camp running the VK3SCG radio station.
This year we will again on HF and Echolink. For HF we will be on 20 m, 40 m and 80 m depending on who is around where. With the sun spot number increasing ever so slightly hopefully we can get some good QSO.
Our Echolink station will be running via VK3ZPF-L and we will use a simplex link to this node. I am working on building the node at present as last year we had a few problems with the node.
I am using an old PC from friends of mine along with a Motorola RT85 radio on 70cm. The node will be located about 11 km from the JOTA site and although the path between is not the best, with a hill really close to the far end, I am hopeful we can make it work.
I am planning to try it out a week before the event.
73