January - February 1998

CONTENTS : Main Page | President's Forum | Board Resolution | PARA & IARU Bare Plan | Dust in the Wind | A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words | Spirit of Ham Radio in the Hearts of the Scouts

Ushering the Centennial Celebration of the Declaration of Philippine Independence is the 11th National Scout Jamboree held at the vast picnic ground of the Special Economic Zone in Clarkfield, Pampanga on January 5-11, 1998 where some 38,000 scouts coming from all regions in the country attended the jamboree.

The Boy Scouts of the Philippines through its Secretary General Carlos C. Escudero, requested the presence of PARA for the scout's ham radio activity with the goal of teaching young scouts on the rudiments of amateur radio equipment. With Clarkfield identified as the jamboree site, PARA District III together with some amateur from District I was officially requested to spearhead the preparation of the camp site for ham radio.

On January 3, 1998 mobilization for the setting of ham shack was initiated. Antenna for the different frequency bands were setup. The following hams were at hand to head the activity.

The ham activity for the 11th National Jamboree was made possible with the assistance of the list of amateurs below who in one way or the other extended their time and expertise for the boy and girl scouts.

Hams and their scouts....though its hot and dusty, scouts enthusiastically listen to every instruction. Others with a note on hand jot down, while some are merely listening intensely. Hams setup small group discussion and instruction for their scouts. The first lecture was the fundamental in radio laws and procedure in operating ham radio. Next activity on line is the International Morse Code fundamental scouts were accustomed to the language of dots and dashes, where instructor tried sending three letter word speeds and scouts decoding the word. Most of the scouts were able to decode and even able to send at least some letters. Next activity for the scouts was the ARDF or the Amateur Radio Direction Finder which in essence is the art of locating a signal over an unidentified area. A 1KHz tone generated by a signal and the rudiments of finding signal source is injected to a hand held radio. The scouts were given another hand held radio to locate the signal source. Some of the signal source emanated from a moving target and sometimes it was stationary. It took no less time for others to locate the source, and as a token for their effort, scouts were awarded centennial banner which the scout proudly exhibit in their camp. The culmination of their activity was to establish a radio contact with the distant radio station. Some worked on 2-meter, while others worked on three other HF bands. There were more or less a total of 2,700 Certificate of Participation issued to the different scouts aside from the 85 banerrettes for those scouts with outstanding performance in ham radio activity.

Ham radio activity for the scouts provides both a venue and eye opener in the world of amateur radio. Scouts learned the art of proper and correct use of radio communications. They worked and made radio contacts for the different bands in 40, 20 and 2 meters. Aside from direct radio contacts, the scouts also learned the PACKET system. The scouts made 210 contacts on 40-meter, 56 contacts on 20-meter, 40 on 15-meter, 203 on 2-meter bands and 7 mails in the packet system. DX station shall be sent special event QSL card Philippine Centennial Scout Jamboree that ushered the Centennial Celebration of Philippine Independence.