J.O.T.A. is simply Jamboree On The Air. It's a way for certified amateur radio operators to work with the youth to provide them  with some experience in high tech ways to communicate with each other around the world. The object is to stimulate their minds and get them to look beyond where they are currently at in their own development.

All users of amateur radio equipment must be under direct supervision of qualified (certified) amateur radio operators. There is no room for foul language, music, bird calls, or bad manners on the radio. It's often necessary to remind boys of those things and that radios are not like the telephone, there are not just two parties, there could be hundreds or thousands of people hearing that same conversation.

In a JOTA there are many challenges to all:

 - Establishing a location

It could be a jamboree site, or a mountain top, or an island out in a lake. With modern light weight solid state equipment radio gear can be transported almost anywhere.

- Establishing an antenna

HF radio equipment makes better long range contacts if the antenna (a dipole or long wire) is fairly high. If using the lower bands like 80 meters and 160 meters the antenna needs to be very high, 100 feet or more. Remembers to bring along adequately long pieces of coax cable.  My favorite is a couple of 100 ft lengths of RG-8X cable because it's light weight and relatively low loss. You can lay it on the ground or run it over metal without it changing impedance. Ribbon cable or ladder line suffers from the latter so you can't roll up excess and drop it on the ground, it must be cut to the right length.

You may wonder how you can get an antenna up to sufficient height in the wilderness. It's quite easy and hams have been doing it for ages. Take along a fishing rod, let out some line and tie a weight, like a large metal nut, onto it. Then shoot the rock over a high tree branch with a sling shot.

Forgot to mention tree, they are handy supports. If you are in a desert area you're going to have to bring your own tree. I just saw the equivalent in the form of a 30 ft telescopic window washing pole at a janitorial supply store. They are not cheap. The one I saw was $100 for a 30 footer and they go up in price with quality and diameter. They have all the support of a wet noodle so take along lots of poly or nylon rope to guy the top to objects on the ground. If you intend on not going lower in frequency than the 40 meter band then that may be adequate.  If you want 80 meters then you will need a tree that's got a limb it at around the 100 ft level or higher. I use a specially equipped weighted arrow and a compound bow for putting a fishing line up over a limb. then I use that to pull up a length of power braid and then use it to pull up an antenna wire. I have a 7 band Windom O.C.F.  (off centre fed) antenna made by Buxcomm that seems to tune up well for this. If you are near the ocean or abig lake and have steady winds you can pull a thin wire up with a kite. Lots of good contacts have been made that way. A couple of lengths of bare or enamelled copper wire made into a dipole will do as well and can be got from unwinding the wire off a large transformer.  The cost of the antenna need not be expensive, it could be free by doing a bit of scrounging and resourcefulness.

 There are all sorts of antenna designs to choose from. I recently built a shorty 80m antenna for the roof of a school and discovered it wouldn't work, too much metal in the roof. Another thing I discovered about shorty antennas is how very narrow band they can be so mine could only cover a tiny fraction of the 80m band before I was into high VSWR . These are things you learn as you play radio . I still haven't given up on shorty antennas, there are more interesting things to try yet. All of this because I have a city lot with no nice big trees on it.

Caution:
Whatever you do in regards to antennas and installing them approach with caution. Do not install in the vicinity of power lines. Be careful when throwing lines over branches or limbs, make absolutely sure no one will get bonked on the head. Be especially careful using bows and sling shots when placing pulling lines. They can easily shoot beyond your vision if you are amongst trees and bush. Put the sling shot or bow away in a secure place else unsupervised boys will be tempted to put them to use.

Once antennas are up be aware of hazards of lightning. If possible drive in some metal stakes and attach heavy grounds. Attach a line to your antenna coax before it goes into your shack. If you hear thunder or lightning bursts on your radio (sound like short crackly bursts of noise) disconnect the antenna coax and throw it outside clear of where people are,  and make sure everyone stays away from it until the storm passes.

- Choice of a radio (transceiver)

This is going to depend upon transportation and location. If you are driving in and you have a dry site to set up in and power then you can use anything. I have an older ICOM HF rig that has its own built in AC supply. All you need to do is plug it in, hook up the antenna, and mic and you're good to go.

If you are hiking in to a site then you need to set up a tent and go from there. Canadian Tire sells a nice little roll-up solar cell pack that you can use to charge your batteries. If you choose to use QRP gear (low power transmit - around 2 to 4 watts or thereabouts) and work on Morse code you can probably run the radio from the sun directly as long as it's shining. A wise move is to have a gel cell pack that the sun can charge up and the radio can still run on during cloudy periods or at night.

- Connecting a radio to an antenna

If you are like me and have an antenna like my Buxcomm 7 band Windom or my Alpha Delta DX-CC antenna you will quickly find that it does have multiple bands but they don't all tune up without some help. It depends on surrounding influemces like height above ground and shape (shape being horizontal or an inverted V). I use an LDG auto tuner model Z-11 Pro. It's cheap, light, can run on a batch of AA batteries and is therefore highly portable. It's one of those sort of things that makes life much better when you are switching bands like mad. LDG have other models and they all seem to do well. There are other manufacturers who make auto tuners. I have an SGC SG-230 auto tuner and it could be used under certain circumstances but it's larger and not back pack friendly.  People use them at their homes, in their vehicles, and they can match up a variety of antenna types including old 9 foot stainless CB whips. I have friends with very nicely crafted screwdriver antennas but they aren't nearly as friendly as a 9 foot CB whip close coupled to an SGC-230 auto tuner. The autotuner does all of the figuring out of capacitance and inductance to flip into the path to the radio to make the impedance match for all the bands from 10m to 80m and does so very much faster than I could ever do with a screwdriver antenna. The whip is cheap but the tuner is a bit expensive at around $700. There are other models such as the SG-237 at $440 and SG-239 at $240 and each of those three have their own good points. The 230 and 237 can take an antenna as short as 8 feet long and couple it up for bands from 10m to 80m but the 230 is a version that can be mounted outside with the antenna. Lots are used in marine environments. It can also run 80watts continuous power and higher on peaks. The 237 can only run a maximum of 40 watts continuous throughput.

The SG-239 can run higher power but needs an antenna of a minimum length of 40 feet for 10m to 80m.

Both the SG-237 and SG-239 need protection from the weather.

http://radioworld.ca/index.php?manufacturers_id=89

Manual Antenna Match/Tuner

I started with a small B&W manual tuner and it still works and I will continue holding onto it as an emergency tuner. No batteries needed, not a lot to go wrong. It just takes a bit of fooling around to get it on frequency whereas the auto tuners are almost instant. That's the only difference.


- Contact Links for Scouts and JOTA

Jota International                                                 http://www.scout.org/jota/
JOTA Links Page (JOTA on the Internet)        http://inter.scoutnet.org/joti.html
JOTI Link Through Scouts Canada                 http://www.scouts.ca/inside.asp?cmPageID=100
JOTA Instructions from JOTA International    http://www.rac.ca/downloads/jota47.pdf


- Some You Tube Links

 From: the 8th Air Force Museum Savannah Georgia         http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=1MvgLcMsGUM