The Honest TRUTH About Ham Radio Clubs

hem radio clubs suck that's what I've been hearing people like hem radio clubs no they need to change and it's like okay it's probably true and I've got I've dragged Justin in on this because uh we have um done a little bit with our club here correct and we want to try and impart some of our learnings that we've made over the last little bit of the journey to try and see how we can change that perception that ham radio clubs suck what's what's your opinion on ham radio clubs today like it's a bit of a mixed bag it is a bit of a mixed bag bit of a mixed bag and there are clubs that are trying really hard um and so don't get us wrong they they they're trying really hard uh but that that sort of Outreach um and that getting themselves into the community and and trying to sort of show that AM radio is not this engaging in in the right way correct correct it's it's and trying to break some of those stereotypes of em radio so I noticed something in qst magazine might have been this month or last month they've got a section in there called I think it's Club station and uh a club in the United States they set up a trailer and they've got all of their radio set up and everything and they actually drive around the various schools they drive around um like Port not just taking the r taking it portable for setting up but also like it's more of a public thing to show off sort of like you know a display trailer or a display you know um van or something like that engaging with the community yeah and stem stem's a big one with kids as well and that's one of the things we've done the there is the festival abroad ideas there is science week it's getting out there in front of students in front of the public uh and showing them that amate radio is this really exciting hobby we've had open days yep so we have usually one or two open days a year where we will have Club rooms here they'll be open to the general public and that's what the focus is the focus is not on other hams other hams can come along but the focus is on the public so we advertise it on Facebook uh social media other socials as well uh we speak to radio stations as well and speak to other members of the public family friends whoever we can uh think of we actually pay for promotions as well cuz we think that the investment is worth it to Target um people who are interested in electronics science technology um 3D printing uh makers makers and hacker spaces yeah yeah so and we've had quite a good turnout every time we've had that we've had a lot of families come through actually haven't we lately yeah yeah yeah that cohort that was quite a surprising cohort actually in the last the last one we had and we don't have a car boot sale no we have no a car boot sale we have separate that is a separate ham radio thing which is very important because you know everyone loves a bit of trash treasure and the other thing you need too is you need key people key people to show off the fun aspects of the hobby activities in layman's language yes in in in easy to understand language that engages with people when they come in the radio you've been on the radio just recently yep and we're talk the radio we're talking about real radio fmo broadcast broadcast radio broadcast radio yes it still exists yes so um so yeah Hayden was invited to to and it was a whole 18 minutes which is a huge segment uh for broadcast radio local radio ABC local radio what do you remember of the first time you bounced a signal off the moon oh okay yes um that's just one of the many many things that you can do with amateur radio I've been saying it's a hobby with within a thousand Hobbies because there's so much stuff you can do oh I wasn't able to get through the entirety um of everything that I wanted to cover in the interview which you can't do but the positive thing was is that the producer that I spoke with I had a 40-minute conversation with her on the phone beforehand Fant and then also spoke to her when when I got to the radio station and she's going to be coming up to one of our nights great um that we have here regularly at the club we don't and our that's the other thing is is our club meetings that we have we don't have club meetings where it's all business and because if you have someone who's interested in amateur radio coming into a club and and you invite them to a club meeting they're going to be like this is so boring this is all the business side of things I don't really care about this I want to know what I can do so we have every week uh experimenters nights where we go through all sorts of different facets I mean what what are we talking about tonight the eclipse uh we're talking about uh yeah many many things equip lightning scatter um infed half waves CS of some antennas some test equipment some all sorts of things so and we invite everyone to bring the gear that they're working on for show and tell bring it up on on a on a Wednesday night and we do that every week y um we stream it out on YouTube as well for those that can't get here too um and that's good because people come up and and there's a real we've got a real Community sense a real close Vibe going on here in the club of all different ages we don't have one age demographic we don't have all young we don't have all old we've got a good good demographic and I mean we just had a club member the other day who um who didn't know anything about DMR and they come up and asked yep and people are like yeah cool I we'll help you out programmed the radio up and good to go experimenters nights are probably more focused on those people that work those people who are retired so that's they're also club members they have a Wednesday afternoon group so they they meet at Wednesday at lunchtime bring their lunch up um solve the problems of the Amer world and all of that sort of thing um and and then uh we have a a Wednesday evening group so it's the Wags The Wednesday afternoon group and the Wags which is the Wednesday experimenters group all clubs usually have committees or the people that actually run the club I know we've all of a sudden I've just lost all of the viewers on this video because uh the volunteers of those who run the club are few and far between but here's a couple of tips which we've implemented into our club be a yes Club not a no Club that's what it's about we have spread the load as it was um roles where only one or two people were involved we spread that to a subcommittee so we' have like three or four people that are involved um the key one was though is that we started up a membership um subcommittee so that there's two or three people who are who are tasked with if a me if we get a new member that they are signed up on our our club news letter that they get all of the information they require induction induction yeah induction ask them what interests you in the Hobby and then they they know who in the club they can then forward them on to oh um you know such and such is interested in satellites okay we need to pass him on to this Amer because he actually does satellites he's the guy to go to rather than getting them to try and figure it out making those connections we can have some of the newcomers coming into our circles in our clubs and it's very very easy to say I've done this or I know what I'm talking about which you know we have a lot of subject matter experts a lot of smes big number ofes they should be wanting to impart their knowledge and impart that on to the newbies but there's also a way to do it correct and that's in a way where not getting you know I'm you know I I I know everything there is to know about satellites and you should be doing it this way is just helping them through their own to help and support you in in what you want to do if you've shown some interest y cuz we all started somewhere oh yeah we all and we all had those Elmer that we all look back on very fondly and go ah he really helped me we've probably she yeah we this actually probably interesting is at least here in Australia we don't use that term Elmer that much no um but it is something that I think is very important is that we need to get back to the days of really helmering people or Mentor coach in business pance so yeah Hayden's Point earlier is we've separated the business side of running the club to a a totally separate time the the committee meets um every so often they meet every month and groups those subcommittees meet as well but they they meet outside of our our general meetings um and they do their business they report back and we tell members about what we're doing and all of that sort of thing but that's quite quite separate and and doesn't involve uh you know the general populace the general members and we've also started a club Discord as well where we have about 90 members I think we' we our club here in in Hobart uh is around about 140 members at the moment and 90 of those are on Discord which is fantastic cuz we've got all sorts of sub channels on there to do with all sorts of things that we're talking about in the club if someone someone suggested the other day hey uh they started talking about mesh tastic we want a mesh tastic Channel cool you've got a mesh tastic Channel everyone's talking about mesh tastic and everything else in there so um we do our announcements we do our general chitchat people post the one of the biggest most popular channels in there is the soda and Parks channel so people are posting that they are up on the mountain top they post you know the photos of the mountain trip the equipment that they used hey my uh you know this is the antenna I built the spot yeah we got an automatic SP so we know so if a club member goes out and they decide to um to get on the air on a mountain we get a we get an alert um so yeah it's it's utilizing what we've got to try and make things um a little bit more accessible a little bit more interesting uh we we try to be a doing club and and I mean it it for you watching it might all sound like this is you know real easy but it's a lot of hard work and but you can get there even with just small little changes you can get there and we and it's a bit of a Snowball Effect actually once things start happening they start they start really happening so generally you you probably need one or two key people who are the ones to really like really go-getters to actually start things and get the ball rolling once the ball as Justin said the ball starts rolling it starts to snowball that's when other people start to take it on and then you formed these subgroups in your Club so like I said we've got the park subgroup interest groups we've got microwave subgroup yeah interest groups uh we've got you know all sorts of different um subgroups and then it's good because they you know they all look after themselves eventually and it and it means that um you get a thriving club and and I feel like our club I'm quite proud of where our club's at at the moment and um what I would like to see is other clubs try and replicate some of our success that we feel that we've had and uh and do that you know um in your Club so um ham radio clubs don't necessarily need to suck uh they can be better and we can all work towards it that's for sure Justin did a talk not that long ago about all the ways that our club um has been speaking to the public uh We've also done another video on our open day as well which I'll also show on the screen

Channel: Ham Radio DX

Views: 12,365

Keywords: ham radio, amateur radio, ham radio dx, vk7hh, ham radio australia, hrdx, amatuer radio, amateur radio australia, ham radio club, amateur radio club, ham radio gatekeeper, ham radio gatekeeping, ham radio problem, ham radio haters, ham radio abuse

Id: T0_zNI4RinA

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024