On October 20th, the Huron Amateur Radio Association took the Ecomm Trailer to Wessington Springs for the 50th Anniversary of Jamboree on the Air. Rod Husiman, KD0AKN, a relatively new ham from rural Wessington Springs, is also a Scout troop leader. He invited our group to participate in this worldwide Scouting activity.

Rod was hoping to get at least a half dozen scouts to this special event, considering this was the opening day of pheasant hunting. Boy were we surprised to see 26 scouts and their leaders show up! They came from Pierre, Mitchell, Miller, Wessington Springs and other locations. The events were to start at 9:00 am but most were there before that. The program started out with some explanations about ham radio. Lloyd (WB0LUX), took the trailer to the site the day before, and he and Rod set up some demonstrations for the youngsters to work with, and get the trailer located, iron out the antenna locations etc.

Saturday morning Lloyd, Rod, Sam (N0OTB) and Bill (KM0F) arrived to present the demonstration. I understand the "classroom" started off a little slow. Then they started to bring groups of four or five scouts into the trailer. Lloyd talk to them about various digital modes, and demonstrated how RTTY works by making some contacts.

We then tried to get each youngster on SSB to make contact with other scout on the other end. We were able to make contact with W1BSA, W2BSA, and a station in Bonarie Curacao, PJ2 also a scout station, and others.

They then went back to the hands on and static displays at the fire hall meeting room. (Thanks for the use of the Hall guys!) Each Scout had the opportunity to use a solder removal tool and also used a soldering iron to solder in components on an old radio printed circuit board. They also worked with some simple circuit breadboards and used an oscilloscope to see what a tone generator output looks like in waveform.

Also a mike was hooked to the scope so they could see how their voice is converted from an audio form to a mechanical and then to electrical energy. When some of them came back out to the SSB on the air demonstration, they no longer had that 'first time timid voice! Lloyd also brought some QSL cards to locate on a map and globe where they came from. Rod and Lloyd did a superb job of setting the displays in the hall.

Every one had a good time, including the scouts, scout leaders, and hams alike! Who knows, maybe we set into motion the wheels to produce some new young amateur radio operators.

Would we do it all again? In a heartbeat!

Prepared by Bill, KM0F