WHEN RULES ARE NOT OBSERVED

During the recent JOTA when a group of hams were chatting someone from several Jota stations called CQ right on the frequency used. The callers were not ham radio operators. It looked like the licence hams let loose the radio to the scouters. One of the reasons why a rule for a licence ham to be there or at the club station is to ensure illegal things do not happen and the ethics of ham radio are followed. The licence hams are the 9M2s.

I had run a field day station before. When I wanted to go somewhere else I disconnected the mic and brought it along with me. Scouters could monitor but could not transmit. A fellow ham who is in charge of a club station or a field station must understand and not to allow his emotion being controlled by the feeling of pittiness towards the people attending the rigs when he is away. In this case he himself is inderectly involved in allowing the scouters to cause disturbances to the people on communication mode.

Scouters should be taught to look for other JOTA stations, local and abroad. For a long distant commnicatons the time is over 10.00 pm local. But in some camps scouters already went to bed. Day time communications would be possible with Japan, India, Indonesia, the Philiphines, Brunei or may be Australia. If the band is bad try the local stations.

Scout HQ could first discuss to the possible frequencies to be used by the JOTA stations and distributed to the respective sites. In this way the scouters would know where to go to look for their counterparts.

This error did not only happen in Malaysia. I heard one JOTA station in Indonesia calling the JOTA station in Malaysia while the later was in communicating with another JOTA station. Certainly it disturbed the communication. Such an incidence show that the licence amateur was not around.

All Malaysian hams should observed rules. One should not be a hero to champion the rule breaker. People do not get annoyed with the scouter who called CQ on the frequency but with the person in charge of the station.