My friend Dale Lamm, NX8J, took this video of a QSO between me and KT8BSA in Ohio during the Jamboree on the Air this past October. It is great to see the other side of the conversation, particularly the Scouts’ responses. This is in miniature what it is like to get roughly 6,000 amateur radio stations on the air with 700,000 Scouts at the microphones during the third weekend in October.
The back story is that Josh Cunningham is a friend of mine from together attending Scouting’s Professional Development Level 1 course in November 2011. This is entry-level training for frontline district executives at local Scout councils. I attended to build my knowledge of Scouting the better to perform my job at the National Council. Early Saturday morning during JOTA I received a message via Facebook from Josh to see if I could get on the air to work his JOTA station. Sure enough, we were able to make contact. I had another Scouting friend, Dan Giles, reach out in the same way to facilitate contact with a station in Alabama.
If you haven’t yet tried JOTA, by either supporting a local Scouting event, or by getting on the air and talking to Scouts, I hope this video gives you insight and motivation — third weekend in October — make it happen!
