JOTA Cluster

Jamboree On The Air is an excellent event organised for Scouts every year. It brings amateur radio to the attention of many youngsters that may never have heard of it if it was not for JOTA and encourages understanding through communication across international boundaries.

I was never a boy sprout, sorry scout, but I have a deep respect for the work that youth organisations like the Scouts do in particular embedding a love of the great outdoors in to those whom otherwise would no nothing but the depressing grey concrete jungles where they live. Scouting cuts across social boundaries and educates its participants on a myriad of subjects in ways that make it seem like fun. In these days of obese hermit children who never stray from in front of the TV, games consul or PC except to order pizza or a McDonald's we need to make sure these organisations have our support.

We can all show our support by working the JOTA stations, but if you are going that little bit further and actually running a JOTA station there is a new tool in your armoury to making Jamboree On The Air a day the kids will not forget. You can now find those prized JOTA to JOTA contacts more easily via the JOTA Cluster.

JOTA Cluster is simply a Dx-Spider cluster node running stand-alone, so spots posted on it will not appear on the DX-Cluster. Amateurs from the JohnMcCormick group in the Netherlands came up with the idea. The cluster is available at the address pi4raz.nl port 7300. If you have a telnet cluster client that can be configured, just add the node so you can use it or use the web interface at http://www.pi4raz.nl/jotacluster/cluster.php