Well, today was the Scouts Jamboree On The Air. A couple of us arrived at around 7:30am to get ready for the Scouts at 8:30. Of course, they were early and we had 15 or so Scouts before 8. No big deal. It actually worked out well, I think. They pitched in and got hands-on training in assembling and erecting antennas.

I’d say we had an easy 40-50 Scouts (including Cubs, Weebelos, and Girl Scouts) throughout the day. I was disappointed that the media didn’t show up but I guess you can’t have everything. We ended up with three stations (2 voice 1 digital). I was running the digital station and unfortunately the G5RV I put up didn’t work at all for me. I had problems using the same antenna at Field Day so I’ve decided this isn’t the antenna for me. I ended up building a 80M off-center fed dipole on-site and tuned it up on 20M. It worked great and in no time I picked up Canada and Mexico.

The highlight of the day for me was seeing the excitement on the face of a 6-year-old Tiger as he made his first PSK contact with a very patient Canadian station. Hats off to Colin for being willing to wait for some slow typing as he asked several questions.

Looking forward to next year!