Fundraiser For Youth On the Air

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh all right, we're almost two minutes past, so let's
go ahead and get this started. What is going on,
ladies and gentlemen, I'm Frank Cagey five days Jay and
I just turned down the noise and now Google my
computers meet my own mic. Here. We're gonna have some
fun today. We got two special guests in the background.

(00:24):
I'm finding windows with the mic volume, and we're gonna
be doing a fundraiser. The link is in the description below,
pinned to the chat and also after the life story
be pinned to the comments. We're doing a special fundraiser
for Youth on the air. So let's go ahead and
get started like always by playing that intro video or
that awesome intro video. A quick shout out to all

(01:09):
my patriots. It makes the show possible. You can support
me I by joining Patreon and the link below and
on to take Radio and there we go. I fix

(01:32):
my mica. What is going on, ladies and gentlemen, we
are you gonna have some fun today? Is a special
live stream. We're doing a live stream for Youth on
the air. There it is the comment the comments pinned
to the top, and it has the link to go
straight to the Youth on the Air donation page. They
need some help. They got a couple of shortfalls, so

(01:54):
we're doing to do some fundraising. We're gonna have some
fun and just kind of hang out for this lunch
time and hey man, I if this goes great, I'm
gonna be doing some more lunchtime live streams. Let me
just do a quick little rundown. Thank you to all
the Patreon the YouTube memberships are keeping this channel possible.
Your support right now means a lot and you're keeping

(02:17):
the channel going. So thank y'all to all my supporters
on Patreon and also YouTube membership. I got a sticker
pack over on Jason's website that has all my Tank
Radio stickers. I have the mousepad and the new Tank
Radio pillow which is somewhere around oh here. It is
over on the Etsy site and this is amazing pillow.

(02:41):
And finally five percent off that gigaparts. Go to gigaparts
and the link in the description and you get five
percent off any item listed there. I know it ran
through that fast because it's not about me today. It
is about Youth on the Air and I'm gonna bring
in some awesome, amazing people. First, we got Haiti and
then we have Neil with the Youth on the Air organization.

(03:04):
How y'all doing today.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Doing grade?

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Pretty well? Here? Pretty good here as well?

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Awesome, awesome, all right. I think I got the audio
levels right and I didn't mess up like yesterday's live
stream where we didn't have audio for a minute. But sweet,
Sweet and the tady, this is your first time on
a least my live stream. Tell us a little about
yourself real fast.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
So I am the public relations manager for you on
the air in the America's I got my license, I
got my tech I guess when I was ten years
old in fifth grade, and then I got my general
and extro like right afterwards. I've been very involved with
I Maturitio ever since. It was about a year or
two after I got my first after I got my
licenses that I was at Yoda camp for the first time,

(03:55):
and then within the next couple of years I wanted
to get more involved, so I was the assistant Pure manager,
and then I moved up to Pure manager after camp
last year.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh wow, wow, and your call signed? What's your call sign?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
My call sign is Kilo Echo eight Lima Quebec radio awesome.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
And what is one of the amateur radio aspects you
are enjoying most right now?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
My favorite aspect of amateur radio right now anyway, I
mean it has been for a while, but is definitely
c W c W O.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
If you see me type in the chat, there's a
reason why I don't do CW I dyslexic everything because
I'm majorly dyslexic and just just tried to get the
c W letters all out right that that's probably too
much of a nightmare for me, so I haven't done
that yet. I played a lot with FT eight FT.
It's kind of fun. I enjoyed that kind of in
the evenings, you know, and you're winding down and just

(04:53):
just like I'm done talking on the radio, but you
still want to play a little bit of radio, and
of course parks on the air. Parks on the air
is so much fun.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, Frank, you might want to ask her, yes, how fast?
How fast she can copy? Oh?

Speaker 1 (05:08):
How fast can you copy?

Speaker 3 (05:10):
On a good day? I can go thirty five?

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Thirty five? Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
On my best day, I could do twenty on my
best day. She can do it?

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Just got to do out there and get him more,
do it more, Neil, I know, I do really do
want to learn c W. There's this that mental hurdle
for me, and I got time now, so I might
try to pick it up. We'll see, we'll see. But
so the Youth on the Air Summer Camp is coming

(05:46):
up this week, next week or next week.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Okay, I leave tomorrow, That's.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Why I was thinking it was this week.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, I leave tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
And what what What is the Youth on the Air
Summer Camp.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
So, the best way that I can describe it is
like any other summer camp, but for younger kids in
amateur radio. Basically we get together. We start on a Sunday.
Halfway through the day we have like an opening ceremony
and everything, and then for Monday until Friday afternoon we
have different sessions about like different aspects of amateur radio.

(06:23):
We'll go through stuff like CW, contesting, parks on the air,
some it's on the air this year, satellites, basically anything
you can think of we would be willing to have.
We've had high latitude balloon launches. I think we have
one this coming week as well. Yeah, there's the schedule
so it's a pretty pretty jam packed week. But we

(06:44):
go through all of these different like super ham Radio
maybe tech intensive sessions, and then at the end of
the day you can see like the green chunks. I
guess we have a lot of time to get to
know other young hams that are there as well. That's
that's honestly. Side from the cityban contesting sessions probably one
of my favorite parts, because it's really hard to get

(07:04):
to know a lot of kids your age and image
radio if you're younger, and so you get basically like
a group of twenty to thirty of them together and
there are a lot of really good friendships made. So
that's that's in a nutshell, what Yoda campus.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
That's so much fun. And the camp itself, hold on,
I'm getting tripped up my own scenes here. The campus
self is pretty much supported purely through the Youth on
the Air. There is just a small fee that you
charge and everything else is picked up by the Youth
on the Air organization.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, so campers only have to pay one hundred dollars
plus their transportation to it from wherever the camp is
being held that year. This year we are just outside
of Denver in Thornton, Colorado. The past couple of years
we've had it in Canada, but it's also been in Cincinnati,
so you pay your travel to get there. Do have
scholarships available if you need assistance, but it's just one

(08:04):
hundred dollars fee.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
One hundred dollars fee. That's that's amazing for just to
be that that low of a barrier of entry for
any of the students out there to want to go.
So currently you have a donation page or y'all have
the donation page at the Youth on the Air dot
org slash donate and uh, we are going to try
to drive our best everyone over there. We they we

(08:30):
do need your help to donate and make this more
just keep this going. And they're the the donation link
is right there at the bottom. They also do PayPal,
go fundme, and a couple of other cash app ones.
And we have a goal here for five thousand dollars.

(08:52):
Right now, we're only at four percent.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Well that's our that's our auction.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Oh yeah, you were tell me about this last time.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, the long term goal is five thousand. But yeah,
we we had the auction for the Garmin smart watch
and that went for two hundred dollars and twelve dollars
for shipping. So so that's that's why the gift Butter
thing is there. But you can give through gift Butter

(09:22):
as well, so that's up to you. And if you,
if your employer does matching, we're registered with Benevity and
Schwab Charitable so if you if your employer does matching,
you can do it that way and we get even more.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Oh that's a great idea. I knew my previous employer
did have the matching program and that that would have
been an awesome thing to utilize. Awesome. Let's go over
to the camp there there there the link is so

(10:04):
this was the previous camp picture.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, so that's our group picture from last year. We
were in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so it was it was
a little bit of a trek to get there.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah, we had to get everything straightened out before before
the week started, but after that it was a really
unique location. We had the opportunity to operate from an island,
so we took a bunch of portable setups out there,
made some contracts from there. I believe it was also
a PoTA as well, so we got to do that.
We also got to spend a little bit of time

(10:38):
like at the Harbor uh kind of learning about ah
Halifax's history and everything. So that was it was a
really unique location to have camp. Mm hmm, maybe a
bit bumpy getting there the year before we'd had it
in Ottawa. So it was our second year in Canada
last year.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
And and your h Neil was telling me on the
previous stream, y'all are trying to do like every other
year or every other other year going to Canada.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
So we like to kind of move the locations around,
not necessarily like just Canada per se, but our first
two years we had in Cincinnati, Ohio, just to kind
of like get this off the ground, make sure that
we had most of the kinks figured out. But ultimately
the goal of Yoda Camp and kind of how its
structured in Europe as well, is that you move around.

(11:30):
I mean in Europe it would be countries, but here
we move countries or just geographical location to accommodate as
many people as possible. We had a lot of Canadians
at camp last year for obvious reasons, but this year
we'll have more of an American population just because we're
in Denver again. But yeah, so I'm not sure that

(11:50):
we like every other year strictly switch back and forth,
but we do try to move around to accommodate as
many people as possible, and we also switch back in
worth between, like having it in June and having it
in July to accommodate like high schooler schedules, because a
lot of people like maybe don't get out of school
until June won't be able to make it, or have
band camp in July and won't be able to make it.

(12:11):
So I knew I putch things up as much as
possible within reasons so that we can get as many
people as possible.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
I like that. I like that that's a great idea,
and then moving it around. I did have band camp.
I was a percussionist. I like to beat on things.
That that was so that was a fun time. But
it's amazing that y'all are doing this program for the
youth to get them excited about amateur radio. These they

(12:38):
are already licensed, and also help promoting all the STEM
organizations and and and just promoting STEM. I just mean
in general, and I love everything about that. Is there
any like fun tidbits you can share? With the up
and coming camp next week.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Oh, I know, we kind of we look at the
schedule real quick, so you might have seen some stuff
from there. But we do have a lot planned I
guess that we haven't done before. We're switching up the
sessions again, so there will be a contesting session. I
know I'm helping give that one, so I'm super excited
for that. We have a high altitude balloon launch, which

(13:19):
I know we're all coming forward to special event stations.
Of course, those are one of the best parts because
everyone can kind of share like they're operating tips and tricks.
A lot of kids actually have their first ever HF
contacts at Yoda Camp. Believe it or not. We don't
require that you have a lot of prior experience to come.
The goal of the camp is to get you interested.

(13:42):
We don't really focus on like getting people licensed. You
already have to have the license to come to camp.
But if you do have that license and you're looking
to become more involved with ham radio, that's kind of
like that's where Yoda Camp comes in. So we'll have
the special event station all week, and then last year
the Goalie Keys actually donated a key like to the

(14:03):
Yoda group, specifically Yoda in Europe had they've had one
for a while now, and that came to our camp
in Ottawa with some of the representatives from Region one,
so we were like, maybe it's time to get our own.
So we got one of those last year and that
will be there as well this this coming week.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Nice, so at least the the barrier is at least
a technician. You don't have to be a general or
anything else.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
A lot of the kids that end up coming have
generals or extras, but they might not be super familiar
with it. It's really it's for any skill level. If
you're new, you can be if you're new. If you're
older and not necessarily older, just more experienced, you can
be ann Elmer and vice versa. It doesn't really matter.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
And and again, the age rages y'all are targeting is
kind of like the high school age right now.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
So the age range that we take for like an
normal Yoda camp is fifteen through twenty five, so that
kind of encompasses high school college, maybe a little bit
after college too, which is really interesting because then you
can see like, oh, this person's in a career path
that I'm considering like you can ask them about it.
So that's really interesting as well. For our new program

(15:17):
that's coming up next month, Yoda Junior, we've had a
lot of applicants under fifteen in the past couple of years,
and I mean it's already a pretty big age range
fifteen through twenty five, so I mean it's not super
It wouldn't be great to have a bunch of thirteen
year olds. There just maturity differences and everything. So we
started a program called Yoda Junior, which is for anybody

(15:41):
who has a license that's still a requirement but is
under fifteen. So they'll come for kind of like a
long weekend with a parent, and it's the same structure. Vaguely.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Oh that's awesome, And when's the first time you're going
to have the Yoda Juniors.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
So Yoda Junior the first year that we've had it
is this year. We've been planning it for a couple
of years. But next month, towards the end of the
month will be our.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
First twenty fifth through twenty eighth, and.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
So if you're interested in getting involved or attended the accounts,
probably it's too late to try to attend this year's camp.
But where you can you go to just find out
more information about the caps upcoming.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, so it is a little bit too late this
year unfortunately to apply for either of those, But if
you're interested for next year or even like getting involved
with Yoda before, then in December it's Yoda Month, So
that would be a really good way to like kind
of ease your way in sign up to operate with
one of our special event calls. Normally in the US

(16:46):
we get four because we can't get a Yoda call
because it does the four letters. But we'll get k
y kto kt to spell out Yoda so you can.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
For Yoda Month, there's information I think there's like a
whole separate tab about that on our website. And then
to apply and for more information about our camps. It's
there's a link on the website. There should be like
apply at the top where you can find the whole
application and everything and for just more information and also
to like follow what we do throughout the week. We

(17:18):
have social media. We have Instagram, Twitter x whatever and Facebook.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yep, I see those down at the bottom here. I
still call it Twitter. It's just weird. Why do they
do that what is one of the like, let me
transition that back. What is one of the things that
you're most excited for coming up next week?

Speaker 3 (17:45):
So the thing that I am most excited for kind
of like non Ham Radio, I guess would definitely be
like catching up with all of my Yoda friends. Since
I've been in for a couple of years, I've started
to make some closer friends. We stay in touch, talk
to each other, like between Yoda camps, We'll go to
different like Ham Fists, Ham events, see each other there.

(18:07):
So definitely catching up with friends, meeting new people in
terms of the Ham Radio aspect, very excited to use
the Yoda key again, and honestly getting getting to mentor
kids in CW and contesting. I've been kind of getting
into contesting the past year and a half ish, so

(18:27):
I'm excited to be able to share what I know
there as well.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Neil, what are you excited for coming up next week?
Other than getting everything there and set up?

Speaker 2 (18:37):
And I'm excited. I'm excited when it'll be over.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
Successful completion, successful completion, But I gotta show you that
this is what I'm excited about today. Okay, because I
think I think I told the whole story on the
last episode about the Palettes not getting to camp until
the very last minute.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
In fact, Katie's mom is the one who went with
my wife and drove the eighteen hours to Maine and
back to get everything. But these photos are about two
hours old. The Palettes have already arrived at our location
in Denver. Yes, so I have photo evidence. There's the

(19:29):
cricket twenty kits. That's their intermediate build. And let's see
next behind that we have all the arras and satellite stuff.
The yellow box below that is full of Hile sound
headsets and switches. We've got safety glasses there and some

(19:51):
giveaway stuff I think in the other box. And Yo
Tar made it. Yo Tar is our big photoprop that
you can stick your head in and get a a photo.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
So that's nice.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Stop.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Was that the same photo thing I took a picture
of over in Dayton.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yes, yes, that is it. And here's the other box. Yeah,
we've got INTENDA build parts, so we got a wagon,
we got the games, we got a blanket for some
of our soda and Poda activations. There's some more buried
down in there somewhere, our video gears in the black

(20:32):
bag there. So that's all our YouTube stuff. Will be
streaming live for the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony, and
the AIS contact. So yeah, that's some of our stuff.
But never been so excited on a package delivery because

(20:53):
I know the stuff is there. Yeah, last year it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, shipping can be the most frustration of part about
all this. Every time someone sells me at shipping problems.
I go back to the story of the Abril like
four or five years ago, where they're shipping. There was
a huge snaff food and I think it was due
to weather and everything that they had did not make it.

(21:20):
So they were telling people just bring extra suitcases to
the office and they will they will pay to get
them onto the plane. And they were just shoving everything
to suitcases and people are literally rolling them on and
checking them onto the plane. I was like, wow, Wow,
we got a question here from Dave. Do y'all accept

(21:44):
equipment donated?

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Usually not a lot of the equipment donation. We have
to like have volunteers to you know, check it out
and sell it and all that kind of thing. Uh
So usually the only donations we kind of go after
and we just you know, my basement's already full with

(22:10):
those two palettes and probably another palette that's down there
that's not going. So yeah, we don't really do the
used equipment donation thing. We just don't have the resources
for that. But yes we do presentations. I will come
to do a presentation, or Katie or any of the

(22:30):
PR staff will do a presentation, either in person or
more likely Zoom for clubs and that kind of thing
about Yoda and and and get into what it's all about.
So yes, we will do the presentations. But but yeah,
not really collecting the equipment.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Okay, okay, so let's just kind of we're kind of
going in a quarter ish almost half the hour here
I am. We are doing a special donation stream and
Youth on the Air does need your help. If you
can head over to Youth on Theair dot com slash

(23:13):
or the link is pinned at the top of the
chat and it's going to be pinned in the comments
and you head over there and you can donate via
pinpal vermeo I said that wrong, sorry, go fund me,
and they also have a direct donation link at the bottom.
They also have a donation through give Better and that

(23:37):
is a auction and there have a goal set up
for that and this please please they need your help
and with the upcoming camp and also help funding future
camps to come. What are you showing me now here? Neil?

Speaker 5 (23:55):
Uh, Yeah, we got to talk about this, Okay, Bucky,
this is this is going to happen next week.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
So I was trying to advance it here, but it's it's.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Not letty y'all going to do a Bucky strip ye.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
So yeah, in fact, here's here's Katie and Mom with Bucky.
So we're going to do BUCkies on the air next week.
We're going to WWV one day on Wednesday of next week,
and we're going to operate Whiskey zero Yankee Stroke ww V.

(24:38):
From WWV. On the way home, we are stopping at
BUCkies and we're going to have dinner at BUCkies, but
we're going to operate yes, brisket, but we're going to
operate mobile and so we will be Whiskey zero Yankee
Stroke b for Bucky. So we we kind of hoped

(25:04):
to like get people to go to other BUCkies and
kind of do it like we did the Walmart parking
lots on the air thing, but BUCkies did not like
the idea of us setting up antennas in the dog
park and green space and everything. So I did get
them to allow us to operate mobile. So we'll pull

(25:29):
up my my SUV stick an intentna on it. We're
gonna clamp a couple of intennas onto the bus and
get some hamsticks and we're going to run BUCkies on
the air. So, uh, if you want to go to
another BUCkies and work us, that would be great, but
just make sure it's mobile. It's not portable, but we

(25:49):
will have a downloadable certificate if you work us from BUCkies.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
So and what day and time of that that is?

Speaker 2 (25:58):
And that is that is thirday four to six Mountain time.
I don't have my numbers together, but we can figure
it out six Mountain time, so that on Wednesday.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
So I'll be ahead of that, and so that would
be four to six. Then it'll be five to seven
Texas time, and that's the correct time.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, so I'm on Eastern. In fact, kind of something
funny yesterday happened. We had a we had a meeting
and they called the meeting for six thirty and so
we were all like, oh, okay, we'll be there at
six thirty. No, they scheduled it on Denver time, so
it was like, it's really eight thirty, Like, oh oops.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, I'm so used to working with teams being distributed
that you just slam whatever time zone in there in
the email. And I think we also kind of got
used to outlook handling all that for us and just
magically doing everything. So yeah, I can see that real
fast Ritchie in the chat. Go ahead, one ahead, and

(27:12):
go past this technician test Friday. Congratulations, Congratulations. Let us
know when you get your call sign. It shouldn't be
too long. The FCC has been probably pumping those out
in a couple of days. Congratulations. Jeff asked, is there
an Amazon whistle list for any items late last minut items?

Speaker 2 (27:33):
There is, but about a week ago I cleared it
out because I needed to get everything into those palettes
so that they would chip to Denver. So I put
like one item in the wish list and it showed
up yesterday. So the wish list is empty for the moment,

(27:54):
but it will be replenished after camp. But there is
one there, There's just nothing in it at the moment.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
How do we find that whistless? I'm looking on the page.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
It's right there on the donate page that you were on. Okay,
it says right at the top, it says Amazon Wish.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah there it is cool. Cool, And I had to
fix something on another page. This is the multitasking you
do doing live stream.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, so there it is. It's just empty. Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
I am going to go ahead and just link that
right to the chat and I'm going to take a
note of that and it's going to be in the
description and later. Sweet.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
So yeah, what we'll do is when we find stuff
that we should have had, then I will put it
in the list. So when we get back, I will
be putting stuff in the list for next year. So
that'll that'll be there. And let me give you an
update too, because last time we were we were really
really desperate for some big donations, and over the weekend, ope,

(29:07):
here we go. Over the weekend, the Gasmy Foundation and NCDXF,
the Northern California d X Foundation and the Worldwide Radio
Operators Foundation got together and split up almost all of
our shortfall. Oh wow, So we had a shortfall of

(29:32):
it kept going up and down between about eighteen and
twenty thousand, and it ended up at twenty thousand, and
they put together fifteen thousand for us over the weekend.
So with some other cuts that we made, we've got
it down to about two to three thousand dollars that

(29:52):
were short. So you know, if you make those small donations,
you know that that will finish us off and put
us in good shape. And we also kind of need
to put some back in savings because we had some
people that didn't come through last year that said they
were going to, so we kind of need to build

(30:14):
our savings up a little bit too, So so those
donations will still help. And we're you know, like I said,
we're still about two thousand short, but we're much more relieved.
Twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yep, that's awesome. They came by and helped you all out.
And I'm hoping that we are driving some good donations today.
And if you're watching this after the fact, all the
links will still be active, and if you still want
to help, you can go ahead and donate then, And
we really really do appreciate it. I wanted to again

(30:52):
make this a live stream that you can donate via YouTube,
but right now you can't. Man, and things happened. We
kind of get it done right, But but well, well,
next time we'll have this all set up and we
will definitely do this again some other time. If y'all

(31:16):
have a question in the chat, go ahead and ask,
and we will ask it on the air. I kind
of ran out of my interview questions. Anything else do
you kind of want to highlight or talk about about
the youth on the air program?

Speaker 3 (31:33):
I don't. I think I may have like vaguely touched
on it before, But all of the sessions at Yoda
Camp are run or led by younger people. So ideally,
in a perfect Yoda Camp, we would have every session
run by someone under twenty five. That's that's kind of
hard to do. Sometimes a lot of times we'll bring

(31:54):
in a couple adults to run one or two, but
the vast majority of all of the sessions that we'll
have next week are run by people who are youth operators.
And our reasoning for this is that sometimes, as like
a younger operator, learning from an older operator, more experienced
operator can be a little bit intimidating. So kids are

(32:17):
getting a lot more out of it when they're learning
from other kids. So that's kind of how we like
structured Yoda Camp that was one of the things like
at the very beginning that we knew we wanted to
keep so that kids were learning from other kids, and
it was it's just a lot easier that way after
finding people to run the sessions, of.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Course, And that's an awesome idea and it's totally right.
I agree with that concept. I think the kids it's
much easier to relate to a presenter that's close to
their own age and could probably also break the material
down into more familiar concepts that as us older guys

(32:57):
be like, oh, yeah, that's like the thing you know,
you're stuck on the wall and you talked on it
and had to cord. It's the phone, it was built
onto the wall. How do you don't know this? But
it related to more timely ideas and that that's I
love everything about that.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, but it definitely makes for a pretty close knit
group by the end of the week. Usually everybody will
keep in touch in a group, chatter a discord a
lot on social media too, kind of like the little
cluster of us that fall all follow each other. So
that's it's kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yes, that's that's amazing. That's awesome, all right, Neil, anything
you want to add there.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Let's see. Let me now, let me talk about the
opening night. Our key speaker is going to be Greg
W six I z T and he is recruiting youth
to go on the expeditions and he is going to there.
We started partnering with them, and we also started partnering

(34:06):
with the Saint Lucia Contest Consortium J sixty two K.
They are also looking for young people to go to
Saint Lucia to contest, but Greg actually has them go
on real D expeditions and there are also remote operating

(34:27):
opportunities on these D expeditions. Their next one is going
to be Saba and that's coming up in October. So
they're going down to PJ five and that's one that
I need for d xCC, so I'm I'm all for it.
But they're going down to Saber. They're still looking for

(34:50):
a few volunteers to go and this one's going to
be a large youth contingent on this one. They did
one last year to row Tuma and they had I
believe four youth go on that one. This one's gonna
be like six or eight ten something like that. It's

(35:12):
it's gonna be a much larger youth contingent.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Is that Sable Island.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Saba s A b A. It's a Caribbean island.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
I was trying to find the page four but you.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Youth DX Adventure that Katie's been on they used they
have been to Saba before. Ruth, my assistant director, went
to that one, but it's been a while since they've
been able to get into Saba, so uh, we're kind
of excited about that. But the uh, but the South

(35:47):
Pacific guys are putting together this one for for Saba,
so that's cool. And you just passed PG two T
p J two T is also uh using some youth.
I think they may have everybody, uh, but go ahead, Katie.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Yeah, I think their team is solidified for the SEC
worldwide this October. But I know there's there's a little
bit of information about those and also places to donate
to both of those groups on our social media's So
if you're interested in supporting youth contesting, that would definitely
be a good place to do it.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, this is so cool. I'm so jealous that these
are these programs are out there and and going out
of the country and just experiencing all that. That's ah,
I'm jealous. I'm literally jealous.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Well, you'll be able to tune into the live stream
and here Greg speech. He's going to talk about the
expeditions and you know how how all that works. And
like I said, he's recruiting the next class of the expeditioners,
so this is going to be our second joint venture

(37:01):
with them. So he'll be there.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
On what's the information on his live stream where y'all
be live streaming that from.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
So we'll be on the Youth on the Air YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Youth on the Air YouTube. So in the description there
is the at and it says Youth on the Air.
You click on that and then you'll find them there.
James gave me a twenty dollars super chance. So what
I'm gonna do for the superchats coming into this stream,
I am going to personally donate, well not personally. Tank

(37:33):
Radio is going to move the super chats for this
live stream and give them over to the Youth on
the Air directly. I'm going to cover the twenty percent
or no it's thirty percent. That YouTube also is going
to take out of that. So thank you, No problem,
no problem, I wanted to drive everyone directly to your website,

(37:57):
so all the money goes directly to you. That's why
I wasn't saying much on that, but James h called
me out here. But thank you for the twenty dollars
super chat that is going to go directly to the
Youth Air organization. Y'all are awesome to the ones that
joined us late. This is a live stream to help

(38:17):
support the Youth on the Air. They got a summer
camp coming up and they are accepting donations for future
camps and also to help cover some little shortfalls. World
flast just a little bit. The Youth on the Air
dot org slash donate you head over there. They have
an Amazon whish list which is empty right now, we

(38:39):
just found out. But I also have lots of other
ways that they stept donations, PayPal, Vimeo, go fund me,
and a direct donate button down at the bottom here.
And they do have a better give if you want
to set up a one time or a monthly support
to the Youth on the Air organizations. And something caught

(39:06):
my eye. Congratulations look at this to be the email.
Uh I swear no, that's something else. Yeah, I was like, oh,
this might be it that we can finally do it
next time.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh, he just start, wouldn't it right?

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Right? And for me to have my phone on actually
not vibrate during a live stream.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
The worst one is, uh, it happened to me a
couple of times. Mom calls and you just feel bad
for bouncing mom's call. And then after this dream you
cat the collar back. Hi, Mom, I was on a
live stream. Sorry, Uh, it happened to a couple of us.
It's fun, it's fun.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Well, Katie, why don't you talk about the latest thing
with the intercultural Ah?

Speaker 3 (40:09):
Yeah, So Yoda in the America's is kind of structured
based off of Yoda in Europe. I think it was
twenty sixteen. We had two of the people who are
now in the working group for the Americas. They were
kind of like exchange campers, I guess, and they went
to a camp in Austria kind of like took notes

(40:31):
all week and then brought back what they found to
be like the key points. And so that's how we
kind of like started Yoda camps in the Americas based
off of that. And obviously there are some changes to
account for cultural differences and everything, but the past couple
of years, we've had a few exchange exchange campers from

(40:55):
Europe come over. The first year that we had exchange,
I think we had a camp from Germany and one
from Croatia, and then last year we had a few more.
We had France, South Korea. I mean, we had Canada and.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
The US, Austria.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Yeah, and then also some Argentina, but that's in the Americas,
so I won't really count those as exchange. But this
year we have a few more countries that'll be represented.
So we decided to start an intercultural evening, which is
like a really big thing in the Yoda camps in Europe.
Everybody will bring something from their their country's culture, like

(41:37):
a food or a little candy or something like that,
something easy to pack and exchange those all at once.
So we started that. Well, we're hoping to start that
this year, and we're looking forward to that one next
week as well.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
That's that's cool. That's cool. If y'all have any questions
in the chat, I'm typing that out now, go ahead
and ask and we will bring them up on the air.
We want to make this a hour, so we got
another sixteen minutes. We're just gonna hang out and have
some fun and we I asked you earlier about what

(42:13):
was the most exciting thing or thing you're dabbling mostly
you said it was CW, can do you have a
fun though PODA activation story or.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
So?

Speaker 3 (42:26):
I Actually I had not done any PODA before Yoda Camp,
but twenty twenty three was the first year that we
we did a PoTA activation, so I did catch on
pretty quickly. There was a there were some hurdles to
jump over because we were using equipment, a lot of
it that we had built, the antennas and the keys.

(42:48):
That was a straight key the first time. So we
took everything out there and we set up the antenna
and everything, and I was like, wait, there are no paddles,
and to any CW, you know that you're probably not
gonna be doing twenty five thirty five without paddles. So
I I did use the straight key that we had built.

(43:09):
I was not going twenty five words a minute. But
we've we've learned our lessons since then. But Yoda definitely
did get me into PODA. I don't go a lot,
like on my own or with my my family or
anything to do that, but during Yoda camps. It's definitely
one of my favorite parts.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
What she didn't tell you was that she was flying
on CW, not thirty five, but she was flying and
this is a three D printed plastic hee like this
big tearing it up for straight for a straight key,

(43:49):
she was tearing it up.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
If I learned CW, I do want to learn on
a straight key, because I think that'd be more fun.
Do I like that? I just got an idea. I
dug up all the ham Fest questions I did in
the past, and I think it'll be fun to ask
you some of these. Are you ready, Yes, we already.

(44:15):
I already asked you something that you're interested in in
the amateur radio. How about ooh, here, here's a good one.
What mistake did you make an amateur radio that you
learned the most from.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
I have a lot of answers to this question.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Let's go.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
The first and probably most memorable of them for me.
I got my license. I think it was like March
of twenty nineteen, and I got my calls on a
week later, and I was really really excited. They gave me,
like the club, so I got licensed, Like my school
had a club. They started a club. We had a
testing session there, so not like through the school club,
but they ended up giving us a little like all

(44:59):
thing each ar and I got this HD and I'm
super excited to get on the air. And I must
have called CQ on our local repeater for three weeks
before anybody, and I talked to multiple people before anybody
told me, Yeah, you don't call CQ on repeaters. You
kind of just like give your call sign. That was

(45:22):
That was probably the most memorable of them. Other than that,
I ended up trying to learn CW a little bit
before that I actually did. I started. The first way
that I tried to learn was flash cards, paper flash
cards that did not have any sound with them. So

(45:42):
that was. That was definitely one of my bigger, although
corrected at this point, Ham radio mistakes. Other than that,
not really a mistake, but something oh yeah, they're the keys.
Not really a mistake, but something that I uh, I've
definitely learned from is to find as many elmers as possible.

(46:05):
If you can find an elmer for like every different
aspect of ham radio that you want to pursue, that's
the best case scenario, because like you can find a
really great elmer for safe CW, but they might not
be a really great elmer for parks in the air,
So finding as many different elmers as possible is the
one of the best things you can do for you.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Do you have a particular elmer that's helped you through
amateur radio?

Speaker 3 (46:28):
I have kind of to go with what I what
I just said. I have my elmer who got me
into amateur radio. He was our school resource officer for
my early middle school years, so we still were still
in contact. I have kind of like my contesting Elmer's CW.
Elmer's like lots of lots of different ones.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
What is your next ham radio challenge?

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Well, that kind of goes with my next sort of
educational challenge. I guess I leave in August for an
exchange year in Germany, so I'm gonna spend my studying
in a German high school. I don't have a host
family right now, so I don't know like what I'll

(47:17):
be able. I mean, if they're hams, hopefully they have
like a setup or at least like a club station
that they go to, but there's there's no guarantee of that.
So I right now I'm kind of like putting together
a smaller QRP esque station to be able to take
with me. But figuring out like how to stay involved

(47:38):
with like normal everyday operating there is It's definitely gonna
be a challenge. I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
But something have you looked into are they do they
honor our hand radio licenses reciprocal or do you need
to get a local licensed.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
I've looked into it a little bit. That's gonna take
a little more figuring out. I kind of was like, Okay,
I can go stroke DL for three months, and then
by the end of the three months, I need to
have something figured out.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Man, I want to operate overseas. I've been on some
overseas strip as an amateur radio operator, but I never
brung more than just an HT with me. I want
to go and bring a whole HF station. Let's see here.
What was another one we covered? Memorable moments, challenges, mistakes, ooh,

(48:30):
what is an amateur radio adjacent hobby you have or
another hobby this is?

Speaker 3 (48:40):
I feel like they all kind of blend together for me,
if that makes sense. I really enjoy traveling, but most
of the traveling that I've done has been because of her.
For imaateur radio language learning. I since I learned Morse code,
I've kind of started like looking into learning different languages.
I took a Linkuist class this past semester that was

(49:02):
pretty enjoyable, So that was interesting trying to think.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Other than that, are you fluent in German?

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Not yet? Not yet by the end of next year.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
That's awesome. Final question to put you on the spot here,
what got you into amateur radio?

Speaker 3 (49:24):
So that was kind of kind of a mixed answer.
My family has been involved in amateur radio for a
fairly long time. My grandpa's had his license and since
he was probably fourteen. My mom had had her license
since she was fourteen. I didn't know about either of
those until after I got my license, or after I

(49:46):
told them I was studying for it at least. But
like I said earlier, my school resource officer started an
amateur radioing electronics club my first year of middle school,
so like fifth grade, and I was like, yeah, this
looks kind of interesting, so I joined it got my license.
I was the only one that year from the club

(50:06):
to get their license. It's always hard, like if you
are starting a school amateur radio club or one that
has a lot of young people in it, or you
have started it, it's definitely it's hard to get it
off the ground because, especially like if they're younger kids,
high school kids, a lot of people don't know how
to study for this, or just don't know how to
study in general. If you're ten years old, that does

(50:29):
make sense. So not a lot of people passed that year,
but since then we've had lots more get their licenses.
We actually just had a testing session of seven high
schoolers get their licenses a couple of weeks ago, so
that was pretty cool. But anyway, back to the main story.
So he started this amateurity electronics club. I got my license,

(50:50):
and at that point, I mean, I think we kind
of all had the moment where like our first elmer
was the ham radio operator, like they were the one singular,
like they knew everything. So that that summer, he and
my parents took me to a couple of different like
local field day setups, and I remember one of the
guys at one of them was like, I mean, I'll

(51:13):
bet you twenty dollars that next year at field day
you'll you can do c W twenty words a minute.
The next year was was COVID, so we did not
have a field day setup that year, but in fact
do twenty ward a minute CW for the record. So yeah,
but after that, I got licensed in March of twenty nineteen,

(51:35):
so we had about a year until the pandemic kind
of really took over. And once it hit, it was
it wasn't great for anything except my hand radio involvement.
Suddenly I didn't have to go to school all day
and do school work all day, so I wented CW
classes and joined There's this group called Yacht Young Amateur

(51:56):
Communication Ham Team, So I joined that and started like
checking into their nets every night, and those two things
really helped me realize like how much there is in
him radio to do. It's where I found a found
out about Yoda, found out about the ydxa uth TX adventure.
So from there it kind of my involvement just kind

(52:18):
of was exponential, grew exponentially, I don't know, but once
I had a lot of time to dedicate to getting
on the air, meeting people, I've I just got really
involved with that and then I mean I have been
ever since.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Awesome. Awesome. Is there a particular Was it the Yacht
club that helped you learn CW or did you do
it through like another.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
In the early early couple months of the pandemic, the
l c W Club, one of their members, one of
their adult members, was like, hey, he approached the guy,
one of the founders and was like, hey, I want
to start kids classes because like all these kids, they're
not going to school, they have so much time on
their hands. So I was like one of the first

(53:07):
first groups of kids to go through those classes, and
I learned CW there. Kept taking those classes until they
the instructors kind of stepped down and switched over. At
that point, I started teaching for them. So I teach
the kids intermediate and advanced classes. I have since August

(53:28):
of twenty twenty one, I think, so I've I took
those learned through their taught through there. But a lot
of the improvement I did, obviously was on the air,
because you're not going to get better if you don't
get on the air.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Agreed, Agreed. Thank y'all for both coming on. The Youth
on the Air donation page is currently still active, so
go ahead and head over to Youth on Theeair dot
org s lass donate and help them out. Be a
PayPal Vimeo, gofund me or the direct donate button. Uh,

(54:05):
this has been amazing live stream. I'm going to take
James's twenty dollars super chat and I am going to
fund it over to y'all and I hope it helps
y'all and continue on with this, this amazing program. I
love everything about it. I'm going to give the Florida Neil.
Do you have anything to add or you want to

(54:26):
tell us?

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Like I told you before the show, Katie can sell
this better than I can. She's she's the recipient.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
I did.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
I just do all the all the grunt work. But now, Frank,
thanks for doing this. We really appreciate it, you know
we we like I said, we're in much better shape
than we were last time we talked, but we could
still use use some donations to help pay for this stuff.

(54:59):
It's it. It's about two thousand dollars per camper is
what we actually spend. And you know, like Katie said,
we charge one hundred dollars and basically that's just to
make sure you show up that that you have an
investment in it, and we have those scholarships that will

(55:20):
even waive that and you do have to you know,
get there and back. But you know it's you know,
to put on a camp like this, it's it's not cheap.
You know. We've we've got to pay for buses, we've
got to pay for dorms or hotels and meeting space
and all those kinds of things. And we get some
amazing donations of equipment from Icon and from Hile Sound

(55:46):
and DX Engineering and you know all those places. And
then the foundations that I mentioned, YASMI and w W
R o F and n C d XF and and
you know many others Radio Club of America. Yeah, you know,

(56:07):
you can see all of them on our web page.
But without their help and and everybody's help, we couldn't
make this go. I mean I put hundreds and hundreds
of hours into this every year, but I can't afford
you know, seventy eight dollars to run a camp, and

(56:32):
so we we just really appreciate the help and no problem.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
I'm happy to do what I can because put it
to good use. Yep, thank you for coming on, Katie.
Final thoughts and you want to add anything and or
give a shout out to anything.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Yeah, definitely all of what Neil said is very very
true it's it's crazy expensive to have a camp like this,
Like the individual camper cost is very very high. And
in addition to that, I mean we have staff coming in.
Lots of staff members every year come for shoperunning and
to make sure that everything runs smoothly. So definitely huge

(57:15):
thank you to everybody who's donated or everybody who staffs.
It really would not be possible without all of those
donations and all of those people.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Thank you. That's that's awesome. Y'all hang out for a second.
I'm gonna go ahead and wrap us up here. Thank
y'all for watching. I really do appreciate it. If you can,
please go ahead and head over to that youth on
the air donation page and donate and let's help them
get over that last final hump. There is the donate

(57:45):
button right there, and yeah's let's make this happen and
keep this going. Y'all are amazing and awesome. Thank you
to all my Patreon supporters, thank you to all the
YouTuber memberships, and thank y'all for watching. I appreciate ciate it.
As always, go forth and conquer, say bye bye. And

(58:09):
where's the last transition? I can never find there? It
is thank you to all my Patreon supporters. You can
support me on Patreon. There's a link in the description below.
And to all my tankers out there, go forth and conquer.

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