JOTA 2016 Announcement

This weekend the club is excited to be hosting another Jamboree On The Air (JOTA) event. We will be based at the 1st Olveston Scout hall from Friday through to Sunday. We plan to set up stations covering VHF, HF, SDR, Morse, 3D Printing and more. Over the weekend we are expecting to receive visits from groups of scouts so that we can share our knowledge and experience with them.

We will be operating under the special even callsign GB1OSG for the weekend.

We hope to see plenty of scouts and a club members over the weekend, and i’m sure as usual a lot of experiments (successful or otherwise) will take place during our free time!

JOTA Logo

Peter
2E0UAR

Jamboree on The Air (JOTA)

This weekend just past (16th – 18th October) saw TSGARC members establishing a JOTA station for Olveston 1st Scout Group.

John, Garry,Paul, John, Richard, Andy, Rob, Susan, Peter, Peter, Rex, Mike and others attended the 1st Olveston Scout hall from Friday through to Sunday providing many activities and radio stations for Beavers, Cubs and Scouts of the group. Activities included VHF, HF, CW, SDR radio, RepRap and simple Telephony devices. Also we provided a CCTV system.

We were issued with the callsign GB1OSG for the weekend by OFCOM using which a number of contacts were made.

There now follows the obligatory silly picture. Which was taken by Garry’s Raspberry Pi, then streamed to the CCTV PC, projected to a rear projection screen and photographed by my phone. The subject includes John, Garry, Peter and myself alongside a further back projection of the live ISS HD camera downlink provided by Peter and NASA specifically for our event (a little bit of liberty there). Does this qualify for the most exotic selfie?

Silly Picture

The following photos show the room layout and a glorious sunset.Room ViewISS

The Scout that attended enjoyed the experience and viewed the SDR setup provided by Peter, spoke and transmitted CW to Rex at Woodhouse Park. The Scout that attended can be seen below engaged in communication with Rex.

Edward

All in all a good weekend was had by all who attended however the number of Cubs, Beavers and Scouts was severely reduced from those in previous years.

Paul
M0ZMB

 

 

 

JOTA callsign update

The logbook on QRZ.com is now active and the first 50 requests to confirm our QSO’s from the Jota weekend at Conygres have been issued to the stations responding to our CQ’s.
We have opened an eQSL.cc account and will be sending electronic and direct email QSL cards. The design for the card will be based on some photographs taken by Paul. I will make this available on QRZ.com when we have completed it.

JOTA after the Scouts had gone…..

GM001.10.2014GM002.10.2014

The dynamic trio in action……..

The camera stayed in the same position, apart from the order of the dynamic trio can you spot the difference between the two pictures?

The pictures were taken with a Raspberry Pi with a camera module using a time lapse. The time lapse was created using a simple Bash script and a “CRON” job. The script had to be edited a couple of times before it did what was required.

Garry
G7NVZ

Successful JOTA

This year’s Jamboree on the Air at both Conygres and Woodhouse Park was another resounding success. In addition to members of the club we were also assisted by members of the Gloucester Amateur Radio and Electronics Society (GARES) and Woodhouse Park amateur Radio Club.

Paul, John, James and Garry at JOTA 2014

Paul, John, James and Garry at JOTA 2014

A successful two and a half days saw three stations (HF, VHF and UHF) assembled with CW practice and Flight Radar. A number of contacts were made to UK, European and two American stations. During the weekend a number of Beavers, Cubs, Brownies, Guides and Scouts practiced their Morse and spoke on the radio.

The operating conditions at Conygres having been improved over those last year with a new roof being installed. The catering once again was excellent with 6 Gourmet meals being consumed.

The three stations consisted of two FT-857s connected to a log periodic 70cm antenna and a crossed 5 element Yagi with the HF station being fed into a G5RV. The CW practice station utilised two oscillators and a decoding laptop. The Flight radar station was projected showing the location of aircraft as far afield as Heathrow.

I would personally like to thank all members who attended at both Conygres and Woodhouse Park for their assistance and planning.

Paul
M0ZMB

 

 

JOTA Planning & Operation

This week at the Thornbury & South Gloucestershire Amateur Radio Club is the final planning for JOTA.

JOTAWe will be operating a VHF and UHF station at Conygres teaching Scouts how to send a message over the air to Woodhouse Park Scout camp using Voice or Morse code.  The intention is to use VHF for FM phone and UHF for phone/slow Morse.  If you have time this weekend please say ‘hi’ to a Scout by responding to a CQ call.  We will be using the callsign: GB1WSG

Anyone who would like to help can operate with Peter and Rex from Woodhouse or operate from home.

Full details including operating frequencies are on QRZ.com.

GARES will be operating the HF Station during the day on Saturday18th and Sunday 19th hoping to make longer range contacts.

My thanks to John M0HFH for the content 🙂

Andrew
G0RVM