K2BSA Amateur Radio Association — dedicated to amateur radio within the Scout movement. Providing information to support all Radio Scouting activities.

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K2BSA Operation at National Jamboree 2023

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There has been a lot of interest in the upcoming National Jamboree located at The Summit in West Virginia next year, and indeed there will be a K2BSA operation at the event.  We are working on preliminary details of the operation while the National Jamboree Staff get the staff registration open to all.  We are all excited to get back to The Summit and share the magic of Amateur Radio with Scouts and Scout Leaders.

If you are interested in serving on the staff of K2BSA, now is the time to finish getting that Extra Class license and go ahead and update your Youth Protect Training.  We will provide a link for prospective applicants to go through an interview process.  In the meantime keep an eye on the main site for the Jamboree and familiarize yourself with Jamboree Service Team.

 

#JOTAJOTI 2021 is this weekend!

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Jamboree on the Air and Jamboree on the Internet is this weekend, so be prepared!  Here’s a few tips from participants over the past few years:

  • If there are too many stations on or around the frequency, take that fancy circle knob on the radio and move the VFO away to find a clear frequency.
    • Official Frequencies such as 14.290 are really just references that point you to the upper end of the SSB section in the band.  Don’t rely on waiting your turn or possibly creating QRM, move up or down the band and find a clear spot to call “CQ JOTA”.
  • If the band conditions sour on HF, move to VHF or Digital Radio (D-Star, Echolink, M17, WIRES-X, DMR, etc).
    • While D-Star (REF033A) reflectors and Echolink (JOTA-365) ( channels are well known, some of the other digital modes aren’t quite as visible to knowing where to connect to.  Search your channel list for JOTA and you may find some in there like on Brandmeister where we see Global Channels for JOTA on 907 and 9071-9078.  Do you know of more, please share on social media with hashtags of #JOTAJOTI and #hamradio.  We try to keep our list up to date here.
  • If your scouts are having an event somewhere in town where you can setup a quick portable demonstration station, then load it up and head over!
    • Although you should have already planned this months ago, sometimes it’s fun to be spontaneous and just be present!
  • Most importantly, just have fun!
    • Even if no scouts show up, it’s a great time to get on the radio and help other stations show the magic of amateur radio to the youth!

We did publish the JOTA-JOTI newsletter that should have hit your inboxes today.  If you didn’t get a copy of it, you can check it out here.

K2BSA Callsign Requests Issue

I just wanted to pass this note along to those that have been requesting callsigns.  The system has not been emailing the trustee, so the requests were not getting processed.  We will be going through the requests in the order in which they were entered into the system.  If your request was not answered, we sincerely apologize for not getting back to you.  We will continue to investigate the issue with the form submission.

K2BSA Camp Station Committee

K2BSA is happy to announce the creation of the K2BSA Camp station committee. The purpose of the committee is to create a resource for the establishment of Camp based amateur radio stations.   The committee has created its mission statement and has defined what a camp station is as well as started developing the suggested steps in successfully building a camp station.  The goal of the committee is to grow the number of permanent camp based amateur radio stations as well as to make them a useful tool in promoting amateur radio to the scouts and help full fill their scouting requirement.  We also hope that this will help generate future licensed amateur radio operators.  For more information, please use our contact form.