42nd Jamboree On The Air reprint from Monday Oct 18, 1999 K-W Record

'Better Than E-Mail'
Scouts talk to foreign colleagues using ham radios

Local scouts took part in an international jamboree Saturday without leaving the region.

They participated in the 42nd annual Jamboree on the Air, an international event in which scouts use ham radios to talk to scouts around the world.

The local scouts used four stations that members of the K-W Amateur Radio Club set up in the Scout House on Frederick Street in Kitchener.

They hoped to talk to scouts in Europe, but reception problems meant the farthest afield they got was Oklahoma and Texas.

Still, the scouts enjoyed the opportunity to try out a ham radio and talk to other scouts.

"I am thinking of taking a course to become a ham radio operator," Dana Harrison, a member of the lst Lexington troop in Waterloo, said after his stint on one of the radios.

"It is a lot of fun," he said. "It is better than e-mail because then you don't talk to people with your voice."

The 13-year-old talked to scouts in Oakville, and was surprised to hook up with a farmer in Elmira who was using the @ radio in his tractor while he was out plowing.

"He asked me how old I was," said Harrison. "I told him I didn't want to ask how old he was. It is probably a good thing I didn't because he said he was probably old enough to be my grandfather."

Lynda Hayward, a scout mother and radio club member, organized the activities at the Scout House.

She said that in the last few years scouts participated in the jamboree by using a radio set in her basement '

"One operator and six youths was hard to handle," she said. "You really need different stations so the youths can do different things."

The jamboree is a scout event, but it also is a good experience for ham radio operators, particularly the radio club's younger members, said Hayward.

"It is a nice way to get our ham youth involved in the hobby"