Organização Europeia de Radioamadores

Atlantykron is a youth educational summer camp, known as a fun, exciting and unique learning experience with a curricula developed around science, art, sport and culture, taking place in a privileged environment: on a wild island on the Danube river near the village and ancient Roman ruins of Capidava in Romania.

Amateur radio also plays a prominent role in this Academy. This is what the following article is about, written by Petrică Stolnicu, YO9RIJ, EURAO's President.

What is ATLANTYKRON?

A lot of articles about how hams are involved in different kind of competitions, championships, you have already read a lot over the years, but about how hams place the hamradio hobby as a part of science summer academy, you read rare or none. Many DXpedition stories and a lot of journals you already read about, but about the small team of dedicated hams that spent their time, money, knowledge and personal resources to teach almost 300 teenagers about what means “HAMRADIO” as hobby, you are not, for sure!

So, this is the begining for what I decided, after a lot of participations in the past at ATLANTYKRON SCIENCE SUMMER ACADEMY, to share with you, what a great time we had as hamradio team for ten days on a beautiful savage island, somewhere in the middle of Danube River, close to one of the great roman castle CAPIDAVA, Constanta County, Romania.

In fact, 35 years ago, a visionary team of science and culture personalities from Romania, set a summer time a science, art and SF workshop on a wild island named Inelul de Piatră (eng. Stone Ring). In time year after year the workshop was growing up and now for almost 10 days long, in August, each year, a lot of science, art, sport, culture, medical, social, hamradio and space personalities are come to share for free, their science and professional experiences to the youths that are interested to improve their own personality with another kind of knowledge rather on in the school. (https://atlantykron.org/2015/editia-2024/conferinte/)

This phenomenon is called “ATLANTYKRON” (https://atlantykron.org/2015/scurta-prezentare/) and on the year of 2024 was the 35th edition of this amazing and apart, science summer academy. This year the academy was called “PLANETARIUM” and it putted together more than 400 inhabitants under this name that allow us to set 40 workshops and 10 conferences that were kept by different science personalities from worldwide. Here at ATLANTYKRON the HAMRADIO is becoming science through the hams that are talking about it in front of youths and guests!!

This year, 2024, we had along with us, Ravi Prakash, NASA engineer (JPL). Ravi spent two days and shared his experience and knowledge about space and Curiosity rover on Mars!

Ravi visited all workshops on the Ring Stone Island, during the summer academy and was open to know more about each one of it. In the hamradio workshop set by RadioStiinta Association (ARS), Ravi spent hours talking about related subjects but the time was too short even! Here, I have to say that every year, RadioStiinta Association (ARS), member of EURAO, organize a hamradio workshop where we had radio network with NASA's engineers and science personalities that are hams too and our students has the opportunity to ask about related subjects with communication and hamradio in space!

In the same manner we were visited by Guy Djoken, MBA, and Executive Director of UNESCO Center for Peace & Chairman of the U.S. Working Group for UNESCO Clubs, Centers & Associations. He is a renowned Civil Rights activist, public speaker, columnist, Poet and Author of “What a Century!” and we have the opportunity to talk about how the hamradio are connecting people and is a common language for all people that work hard to have peace in the world.

Felix Iziomoh, the Principal Consultant at Beeflex Consultancy Ltd, also the founder and Executive Director of International Centre for Leadership Development Nigeria.

The list is too long but we have to mentioned a few Romanian personality that including General Major (r) Dumitru Prunariu - the only one cosmonaut from YO and Mrs. Mironov Alexandru the former ministry of education in Romania.

The ARS team was consisted by: YO3LMP, Călin, the main operator for YP0IP; YO4GKP, Mircea; YO8TLC, Cezar, in charge with teaching about satellites and SDR technologies; YO8TLD, Gabi; YO8-153, Paul (SWL); YO9RYI, Rareș, the second operator for YP0IP; YO9RYJ, Alina; W8GEM, Heather, World Genesis Foundation's representative; and YO9RIJ, Petrică, the head of team!

The time and the space is not enough to tell you about what is ATLANTYKRON for hamradio and youths but for sure part of them are prepared well to know about the hobby of HAMRADIO and most of them obtain SWL Certificates from ARS.

This is what EURAO are doing since years and we will continue to motivate youths to become hams that is in our opinion the most complex hobby in the world!