J.T.O.A

[Kenneth A. Christiansen]

I have been asked to put up a station for the local BSA troop to observe Ham
Radio on Saturday October 16th. My home shack is not usable so I plan to set
up my camper with the 23 ft center mast and 10 foot end supports for my 44
ft doublet fed with 22 ft of 450 ohm window twin lead. I will use my K2/100
sn1031 and KAT100 with a W2DU balun and my 105 Amp deep discharge battery
and an analog supply for power. I have had many camping CW contacts both QRP
and QRO with this set up. The location will be our Church parking lot near
the Boy Scout Xmas tree stand. This location has buried 110 VAC and is
several hundred feet from the nearest power line. Now I come to my problem.
The contest rules at ARRL call for a frequency of 14.070 MHZ for 20 and
3.590 MHZ for 80. I don't plan to use 80 but the 20 meter frequency is in
the middle of the PSK31 and Digital part of the band. Last year I tuned
around and never did hear any JOTA stations. I do have a microphone and
while I do not work much SSB that might be an option. I need your help to
let me know where the JOTA activity if any will be and will I be able to use
CW or has everyone moved to SSB. I could use some hints about working the
stations on SSB too as I don't have much experience with 20 meter SSB. There
might be some chance to work 40 meters too but in my experience we are so
far from the highly populated parts of the country, here in Fargo, ND, that
I expect 40 meters to be dead during the day.

Thanks for any ideas.

W0CZ Ken
[hidden email]

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[Masleid, Michael A.]

Hello Kenneth,

> I have been asked to put up a station for the local BSA troop to observe
> Ham Radio on Saturday October 16th.

I'm going to be running barefoot out of park in Dyer,
Indiana.  It might work?

Last year I was listening from the Camp Betz.  I could hear
JOTA SSB stations on 40 and 20 meters from across the country
with no problem (the antenna wire tossed up in a tree, and
the ground wire running off into the woods somewhere).

I didn't hear anyone at the JOTA calling frequencies, but
there were scouts up and down the band from there.

Figure that JOTA is set up so the scouts can talk on the
radio.  Only a few scouts know CW, so I wouldn't expect
much there.  This year I've built the SSB adapter for
that reason, but I don't know if it works.

You might want to try near 7.270 MHz, I think that's the
40 meter calling frequency for JOTA in the USA.

73, Michael, AB9GV
(Scoutmaster, Troup 510)
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[Francis Belliveau]

Kenneth,

I will second what Mike said, there is very little CW activity associated
with JOTA.

There is no real reason to favor a particular frequency.  Just tune around
the band(s) and you should find stations to talk to.  Seems like I remember
being involved in a 4-way QSO with Washington somebody north of the border
from there one year.  Very pleasent and the scouts enjoyed it.

20 meters should be prodctive for you.

Good Luck,
Fran

P.S.  Have some code practive oscillators and keyers around and the scouts
will enjoy playing a bit with them.  If you have some help you can even to
demos.


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