YOTA Month a Success in the Americas

December YOTA Month 2020, a worldwide special event celebrating youth in amateur radio, was a great success in the Americas! 24 operators under the age of 25 used special event callsigns to promote youth in amateur radio here in the Americas.

In the U.S., four 1×1 special event callsigns were used: K8Y, K8O, K8T, and K8A (Y O T A). Twenty-four youth operators across the U.S. rotated these calls throughout the month of December. They made 14,699 QSOs using SSB, CW, digital modes, and satellites. This is an 11.3% increase in QSOs from their total in 2019 (12,487). Some operators used the callsigns during contests such as CWops CWTs, FT Roundup, and the RAC Winter contest.

We asked the U.S. operators for their favorite aspect of YOTA Month. Michael, W3MLJ said, “My favorite part of YOTA month was running 5 radios at once. They were all on digital modes. Running the big FT8 pileups was very fun and to see the rate of the contacts being logged was really cool.”  Calin, K8MTJ commented, “In general I liked making a bunch of QSOs in a short period of time.  In particular, I had a really nice conversation with KC9CUK, Erich, on 40M.  I also got a kick out of working ZR1ADI, South Africa, on 20M FT8.”

Youth from the Americas enthusiastically spread the word about youth in amateur radio and made 14,699 QSOs in the process.  The event was a great prelude for the first ever camp to be hosted in the western hemisphere, which is still planned for July 11-16, 2021.

Bryant Rascoll, KG5HVO, who coordinated the efforts of the twenty-four operators and the logs for the USA stations, said, “Using lessons from YOTA Month 2019 made organizing more streamlined and flexible for our operators this year.” As part of his responsibilities, Bryant also managed Logbook of the World accounts for the US stations, the QRZ.com pages for all the callsigns, maintained an operator schedule, worked with YOTA month manager Tomi, HA8RT, and reported in to the YOTA camp committee in the Americas.

Globally, over 137,000 contacts were logged using 46 callsigns, all operated by hams under the age of 26.  That total surpassed last year’s record number of 129,029. The USA placed second, behind Croatia, in the total number of contacts made during the event.  Over 2,100 operators (both youth and adults) requested and received an award based on the number of YOTA contacts made as of January 19.

Awards that have not yet been claimed can be downloaded from events.ham-yota.com. Additional statistics are also available there. All YOTA Month QSL cards should be requested by OQRS.  More information about YOTA in the Americas can be found at YouthOnTheAir.org.