The Scout’s UK Headquarters station GB2GP, located at Gilwell Park, North London, will be active for this year’s JOTA with the very special callsign GB100GP to celebrate 100 year’s of Scouting at Gilwell Park.

Located in North London (JO01ap) the campsite consists of 110 acres of fields and woodlands and annually has over 30,000 youngsters from all over the world visit the site. This year Gilwell Park celebrates its centenary of ownership by the Scout Association, and in recognition, the permanent amateur radio station has the very special callsign of GB100GP

The third full weekend every October (this year 19 and 20th October 2019) hosts the world’s largest Scouting event - Jamboree on the Air - with over a million Scouts worldwide taking part. Gilwell Park has regularly taken part since JOTA started, 62 years ago. This year the campsite will again be active, using the special GB100GP callsign and will have over 250 youngsters visiting the station over the weekend to take part in a variety of activities. Please take the time to call - the Scouts would love to talk to you

The radio station will include HF operations focusing on putting Scouts on the microphone in direct contact with other Scouts around the world. The station is able to run three full-power stations simultaneously and will be centred around the Scout recognised frequencies (3.69; 7.190; 14.290; 18.140; 21.360; 28.390 Mhz); in addition, it will be demonstrating digital modes (FT8, PSK, RTTY) on HF. GB100GP will also be active locally on 145Mhz with voice and SSTV. Last year the station successfully exchanged slow-scan images of the Scouts swapping badges with other stations, and they would like to repeat the activity this year. The images were generated simply by writing a message on a small whiteboard, pinning a badge to the board with blutack and grabbing the image with a webcam and sending on VHF using the WebCamSSTV application from G4IJE (http://www.classicsstv.com/webcam_download.php). With the good location and a nice high vertically polarized aerial for 2 metres, the station is able to reach into Essex, Kent, the home counties and beyond. Please take the time to call - the Scouts would love to meet you!

A new activity this year for the Scouts to try their hand at will be a TV station, complete with green screen and autocue. The TV station will also be used to transmit DATV to other stations active on the new QO-100 satellite and contacts will be welcome from other Scout stations able to access this satellite. In addition to the wideband transponder, GB100GP will be active on the narrowband transponder with voice, CW and SSTV. The radio station is not the only activity the Scouts will take part in during their visit to Gilwell Park - there will be the chance to build their own electronics kit; take part in Jamboree on the Internet using Skype and ScoutLink; try their hand at assembling an emergency radio station and building their own aerial; and there will be demonstrations of weather satellites, morse code, ads-b aircraft tracking and other associated technologies.

Follow GB100GP - Gilwell Park (Facebook) - http://www.facebook.com/GB2GP

More Information - http://www.gb2gp.org.uk