Luton Scouts Connect With The World
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In a weekend of hectic activity, Luton Scouts connected to Scouts all over the world for the annual Jamboree-on-the-Air. It was their chance to share Scouting experiences with Scouts in many countries who were all taking part in this amateur radio event of the airwaves.
Helped by veteran radio amateur Ray Aldous, the Scouts spoke to contacts as far afield as the USA, Finland and a radio station north of Moscow. Other links included Greece, Italy, Hungary and Holland. Apart from numerous contacts in the UK and Ireland, the Scouts spent some time learning about international Scouting from the World Scout Headquarters in Geneva.
Five of the Scouts: Aaron Chamberlain of Manor Scout Group, Jake Cady who is with the Warden Hills Scout Group and Daniel Hard, Nathan Roser and Nathan Baker from St Augustine’s Scout Group devoted their entire weekend to completing their Communicators Badge. For this they were trained by Scout Leaders and radio enthusiasts Roger Swann, Brendan Owen and Nick Jarman.
They learned about the airways and signal strength, international call signs and the phonetic alphabet as well as establishing personal radio contact with 25 overseas stations. Ray Aldous said, “They did remarkably well and learnt an awful lot. Many contacts gave them full marks for clarity and wished them every success. “
On Sunday afternoon, after successfully completing a 30 minute test, all five received their special award from tutor Roger Swann. He said, “All of them are almost up to the standard for their 1st stage Novice award from the Radio Amateur Association.” He added, “These days we no longer teach them semaphore or morse code but they do have to recognise call signs and be able to use the phonetic alphabet for direct voice links. They are a credit to their Scout Groups.”
Jamboree-on-the-Air started as an experiment in 1957 at the Sutton Coldfield international gathering of Scouts and has been organised as an annual event ever since. It brings together Scouts from over 200 countries to share a common brotherhood. Surprisingly, language is not a barrier. The universal language of the airwaves is English.
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