JOTA/JOTI 2025

This year, over 200 Scouts and Leaders gathered together in the Joe Rich area for the annual JOTA/JOTI (Jamboree on the Air/Jamboree on the Internet).  This weekend's world wide event, held every year on the third week of October, is the largest digital and radio event for Scouting, promoting friendship and global citizenship. Once again, Howard VA7PWF, Lorne VE7LWK and Mike VE7KPZ volunteered to help with the Ham radio demonstration. Unfortunately Mike had to leave early for a medical situation so Lorne moved over to help with HF. Howard, as in previous years, worked C4FM/WIRES-X making contacts as far away Great Britain and Alaska. This years connection to the WIRES-X network via Okanagan Mountain worked flawlessly thanks to Fred VA7UN from OCARC. The highlights for Lorne on HF was contacting the Battleship Missouri on 17m stationed at Pearl Harbour and chatting with a couple on a SOTA mountain top in Northern California. The weather was so so but the food was great and fun was had all. In total, approximately 60 hours of service rendered.

223 Red Lion Squadron Royal Canadian Air Cadets

In October, NORAC was contacted by the Air Cadets asking for a demonstration for those Cadets interested in obtaining their Amateur Radio license. On December 4th 2025, Howard VA7PWF and Colin VA7EEH set up a number of radios at the DND G20 building in Vernon. The building is a large metal structure, so to help with making contacts, Colin set up his DX Commander Expedition antenna outside. There were approximately 50 Cadets in attendance. Topics covered were various types of radios and antennas. NVIS was also discussed for military applications. In total, approximately 8 hours of service rendered.

NORAC Field Day 2025 took place at Silver Star Mountain Resort in parking lot E at an altitude of 1,600m (about 5,200 ft). This gave great take off for our antennas.

First, the club's sincere thanks to Ginny Scott, Local Sales Manager at SSMR, for pulling everything together for us and doing an excellent job of hosting the club. We had exclusive use of lot E, plus free access to the showers in the village. Very much appreciated.

Views from the location were amazing. Check out the Field Day 2025 photo gallery.

Campers assembled starting as early as the Thursday evening with the majority arriving on Friday evening. Campers included Howard VA7PWF, Colin VA7EEH, Lorne VE7LWK, Simon VE7RIZ, Jerome VE7JAR. Jane VE7WWJ and Mike VE7KPZ also camped with the club for the Friday night. VA7EEH, VA7PWF and VA7RLX arrived early on the Thursday afternoon and enjoyed supper at the resort's Red Antler pub.

There were the usual ups and downs getting Cranky, the club's trailer-mounted telescopic mast, properly set up and operational. But within a couple of hours everything was working just fine although we did discover a coax cable failure as the event progressed. VE7RIZ provided wireless internet which was accessible in most of the camping area and took some wonderful photos.

Operators included Simon VE7RIZ, Jerome VE7JAR, Ritchie VA7RLX, Brad VE7WBM, Warren VA7WPX, Felix VA7VOL, Howard VA7PWF and Lorne VE7LWK. Day visitors who dropped in to show support and help eat the great lunch included club members Gary VE7GCP, David VA7SK, Brad VE7WBM and Doug VA7CPS. Multiple guests from OCARC arrived as well.

Colin VA7EEH and Howard VA7PWF were the stars of the show and planned and organized pretty much everything for the club. Howard provided a great operations tent and Colin did a lot of work getting the laptops and N3FJP logging software working through the event. THANK YOU BOTH VERY MUCH.

Jerome VE7JAR and family enjoyed some mountain biking and Jerome tackled and survived the challenging Beowulf trail. Ritchie VA7RLX enjoyed a couple of hikes and only had one wildlife encounter with a very friendly golden retriever and its owner. Early on the Sunday morning a large black bear did wander across the campsite and disembowelled the garbage can pretty effectively - that bear knew how to take apart so-called bearproof garbage cans!

Results of the on-air activities were 394 contacts in total - 4 CW, 28 FT8 and 362 SSB. We operated on 80 through 6m. All those who attended thoroughly enjoyed the mountain location and low noise operating conditions.