CARDS ran a station for Jamboree on the Air “JOTA” in October 2003. JOTA is an international event giving Scouts and Girl Guides the opportunity to learn about radio communication and contact Scout or Guide groups in other countries. The CARDS station was at Omaka in Christchurch and we also assisted with another station run by Branch 56 at Blue Skies in Kaiapoi.
At Omaka we fielded a number of stations on VHF and HF including IRLP on 2m, HF weather FAX, weather satellites, HF voice and PSK 31. We also had a morse demonstration complete with morse keys which the kids could use to send morse letters and see the results on computer.
As can be seen from the accompanying pictures the scouts and cubs were extremely keen and there was always a number of them using the stations, trying the morse keys (which were extremely popular) and who were full of questions. HF conditions were poor and in this respect IRLP was a great fallback providing regular contacts to several countries.
New Zealand suffers somewhat from being one of the first countries to start operating as the rest of the world is a number of hours behind us. By the time the European and American stations are up and running, it is either middle of the night or late Sunday NZ time which sees our camp winding down. This has lead us to consider a few alternatives for next time including fox hunting some ATV and other activities which can be run locally.
Overall a great was had by all and it was pleasing to see the level of enthusiasm displayed by the cubs and scouts.