Train the Trainer Report December 2018
The last two months were filled with very important events for youngsters in Austria. Although we did not organise any special meetings or activities in this period we still achieved a lot to make it easier to organise events in the future. The OEVSV (the Austrian amateur radio society) held it’s annual meeting where all the regions and different sections were present and discussed the next year, especially the budget. We made sure that youth was an important point on the agenda. Some of the young members were present to show what we had achieved during the last year and what we were planning on doing in 2019. Many of the older generation OMs did not realise how much youth work is going on and that it is worth doing. Sadly some older club members still think that youth work is not necessary and should not be supported. However we also have very strong support from other club members who are very supportive of our plans. It is great to cooperate with them, especially because they are always able to help with their experience.
The national society meeting was followed closely by the annual meeting of the largest regional club. Again a number of youngsters were present in order to show that youth is important and there are actually more youngsters in amateur radio than most people might think. We managed to get one of the youngsters, Nicolas, OE1NBS, elected as youth coordinator, you might know him from YOTA Austria. This is a great opportunity to make cooperation between the youngsters and the society easier and it allows us to work more closely together with the society. We also requested a budget for youth work, however it is not yet confirmed.
12 Amateur radio stations were set up across Austria as part of JOTA, there were many different activities as each station had their own programme. For example some offered simple kit building. Scouts could make their own CW key with a small circuit which makes a sound when pressed. This was of course accompanied by teaching the scouts to give their names etc. in CW. Highlight of the day were contacts to other JOTA stations around the world via HF, many of the young scouts were amazed that they were able to talk to other scouts in distant countries without any infrastructure in between.
Another important event was the CQ WW SSB contest. A group of youngsters was planning to take part in the contest from a large contest station, however this station was out of operation due to technical problems. Instead the team took part from the radio club headquarters. More experienced contest operators gave tips to those who were less experienced and taught them everything they know about operating. For a few of the youngsters it was the first contest.
Some of our plans for the coming months are:
- To organise that our youth team can participate in contests, we want to create a skilled and experienced contest team but we also want to give youngsters who have very little contest experience the chance to participate. For example the DARC christmas contest which is coming up at the end of December.
- We are working on improving the club station of the national radio society, we are adding an extra 12 metre mast with another multiband yagi and building a 4 square for 40 metres.
- We are also organising a workshop where we will be building long wire antennas for 40, 80 and 160 metres which we will put up at the club station but which youngsters can also build themselves and take home.
- We are working on an app which makes it easier for youngsters to learn for the radio exam. It is much easier to learn on a smartphone when you are in the train on the way to school than having to sit down with a book and learn the traditional way. We have a lot of ideas for the app. And of course we will also publish it in english. If you have suggestions or ideas you can send us an email.
- We are considering organising a subregional YOTA camp in the summer of 2019.
- We want to expand our social media channels to other platforms, however we first have to create more content to post on these channels. Therefore we are planning some small events especially to take pictures and make videos for instagram and youtube. Thnakfully we have some great photographers and videographers in our youth group. Hopefully the pictures will be part of the next TTT report.
- We have approached a number of schools and were invited to present amateur radio to the students, it will definitely be interesting to see how they react and which parts they are interested in more than others. Of course we will put the presentation (translated into english) and what we learnt on the train the trainer site for you.
- We are planning some activities in 2 technical school which already have amateur radio stations but have to be re-activated. The problem is that the students which were interested in amateur radio and which ran the station left the school because they graduated and did not pass it on to the next students. We will do a presentation at the schools and try to make it more sustainable by supporting the youngsters more and hopefully also licensing some teachers so that they can pass the interest on to the next classes.
