[Ccarc] Jamboree on the air for scouts

[Phil Snider]

This weeked event at Camp Buffalo Boy Scout Camp was a very enjoyable event 
for me.
I went Friday night to set up. Jeff Burns was there starting the set up of 
the Moxon wire antenna that he had built. It was very interesting. It was 
sort of like two dipoles phased together and it could be switched to point 
east or west by a control box at the radio end of the coax.
It did perform very well. This one was for 20 meters.  He also provided 
notch filters that were made of quarter wave sections of 75 ohm cable tv  
3/4 hardline to notch out the 40 meter station. They use these for field 
day. He made the connectors himself.
He is an engineer at Delphi and lives in Kokomo. He was in charge of things 
and was very well organized.  He provided everything except radio, power 
supply and optioanl antenna tuner.
He even provided a code practice oscillator and key for the scouts to try 
morse code. He also had a digital  volt meter hooked to a key, and by 
putting in the continuity test mode it would act as a code practice 
oscillator. I never realized that I was  carring a code practice oscillator 
in my tool box all these years.
    Chuck did a great job usning both voice and psk-31 digital 
communications. Some of the scouts were very intersted in the digital mode, 
and you could see their eyes light up when they realized it was similar to 
dial up internet in that the computer generated and received audio tones 
that could be sent over the air like modem tones are sent over the phone 
lines.
     There were probably 75 or 80 scouts at the camp total. They were in 
small groups on Saturday and made the rounds of different places that had a 
variety of subjects.  We had groups of three to 8 scouts at a time come to 
our station for a 30 minute time.  We explained some about ham radio and had 
some world prefix maps and fliers for them to look at.
   The scouts really got a bang out of talking to other young scouts across 
the country and in Canada.  Sometimes it was hard for them to pick out the 
voice when there was QRM, but with assistance from Chuch or myself or others 
more experienced in listening to SSB  they were able to carry on a 
conversation. Very few were mike shy, especiall after the first brave one 
tried it.
    We did contact one group of cub scouts.  Next year people could help by 
inviting cub scouts or other boy scouts to their home, or to EMA to operate 
on HF.  I know we contacted one camp in Bangor Maine that had 1200 scouts 
there. They were opeating on several HF bands and also two meter Echo link.
     The scouts at camp Buffalo  were all from Howard county or from Flora, 
because it was their weekend to be scheduled at the camp.
        - I didn't know just what to expect, but we had lots of fun and like 
they say just wait until next year.



Phil Snider
Amateur radio: the professional hobby