Building Experience

While acknowledging the spirit behind the RSGB Beyond Exams initiative, Tony Jones G7ETW offers something of a critique.

For clubs that have shacks, ‘BE QSO Days’ could be put on and over time participants could build logs of their QSOs with club members sitting with them and guiding them on air. This would be a much more meaningful experience than the QSOs in a Foundation course.

2nd Area:‘Getting Involved’

BE Activity 8 is SOTA Activation. Mountain climbing as a club activity? This would have to be a field trip for many clubs, and given that most mentors are, let’s say, not getting any younger, I find it hard to imagine many clubs putting this activity on, valuable as it is.

Plenty of amateurs collect WAB squares, so BE Activity 9 sounds achievable. But BE Activity 10 has issues, I fear. These contest exchanges will not be slick and professional, and serious club contesters at each end may lose patience with them.

Maybe a series of ‘BE Contests’ could be brought into being?

BE Activities 11 and 12 are very practical. New amateurs can get points for helping to set-up or take down a club special event station (Activity 11) and logging or operating during its time on air (Activity 12). This rather assumes special event stations operate in odd locations; I suppose they generally do. For clubs that like special events this will likely be a popular BE component.

3rd Area:‘Taking Part’

Activities in this section are geared around clubs and radio organisations.

Ignoring, for a moment, that some radio amateurs are not very ‘clubby’ people, I can’t help thinking that this is discriminatory to new amateurs who for all kinds of reasons can’t get to club meetings.

BE Activity 15 made me chuckle. There is a world of difference between being on kitchen or chairs duty and performing a role on a club committee, for which you usually need to be well known, reliable and capable – a ‘good egg’, as people used to say.

Undertaking BE Activities 16 and 18 depends a lot on confidence and personality. My club has some meetings in which any member can give a short (20 minute) talk on any radio topic that interests him or her, and some of these talks have been truly excellent. And practical assistance such as when tents are involved or antenna work is being done is always welcome!

To take part in a RAYNET event you need to be a signed-up RAYNET member, covered by RAYNET insurance, so I don’t see how Activity 17 is possible. Perhaps a new amateur could attend as an observer – I don’t know if even this can be done − but this is hardly ‘taking part’, is it?

4th Area:‘Making’

Compare these with earlier BE activities; Activities 19 ad 20 are noticeably more demanding for new amateurs and mentors alike. Clubs would have to have projects available (which they cannot charge for) and allocate a lot of time to this. I see three basic problems.

• Construction and basic electronics are not taught until Intermediate so a new amateur may totally lack electronics knowledge and skills.

• Writing software is not a skill people just have. It is not taught at any level. Even a relatively simple Arduino project such as a VSWR meter or shack clock is too complex – for a complete beginner – for a first project .

• These activities need to be strongly led or new amateurs may not up with a working project.

5th Area:‘Promoting amateur radio’

BE Activity 21: Recruit a student for a Foundation course.

The idea behind this must be that a new amateur in a club introduces a new student who studies with the club and gets a licence.

There are issues here as well. The club may not do training, the new student could live too far away for attending a course to be practical and the new student – now practicals are discontinued – could take an online exam with no help from any club.

This highlights an underlying weakness with Building Experience: assessing and verifying that participants have ‘achieved’ in an activity. Aside from QSOs, little is defined or qualified. True, these are not pass or fail activities as in Training, but for awards to mean anything there surely should be standard minimum achievements for clubs and participant-members to aim at?

BE Activity 22: Attend a rally to promote the club.

For this to work, a club would have to attend a rally (which requires organisation and incurs expense) so new amateurs undertaking BE Activity 22 can regale rallygoers with how their club has implemented the scheme.

Rally organisers justifiably limit the numbers of stand staff, so new amateurs would have to pay to get in, which detracts from the feeling of being ‘on duty’.

BE Activity 23: Help run a Training course by teaching, supporting, running practicals or invigilating.

Two, possibly three of these options most Training Leads would probably discount straight away. BE participants are going to be mainly new amateurs, and are unlikely to have the depth of knowledge to teach or (in most cases) run practicals (should they be reinstated).

Invigilation is a sensitive area. Because the RSGB can – and does – make unannounced visits to club exams, Training Leads make every effort to ensure that exams are conducted absolutely properly.

Invigilators consequently tend to be wellknown club members of unassailable good character. New amateurs – I mean no disrespect – are unlikely to achieve that status in a short time.

That leaves supporting – providing practical assistance such as tea-making, setting up etc. I see good sense, for both clubs and BE participants, in this. Students take a lot of comfort from chatting with recent Foundation-exam passers.

After the Club Scheme

Alongside the club scheme, there is an ‘Individual Scheme’, which has 150 components, and it is envisaged by the RSGB that ‘graduates’ of the club scheme may, if desired, go on to do bits of that. There are no awards, and activities vary very widely in nature – indeed, for some activities no licence is required. I won’t go into the individual scheme here but it is interesting.

Conclusion

I had three aims in writing this

To draw attention to Beyond Exams and Building Experience and the club scheme in particular

• To suggest to clubs how elements of the scheme could be put on.

• To show new (and returning) amateurs what there was potentially on offer.

The scheme is, in spirit, a good one and I take my hat off to its inventors, but there are issues and any club intending to participate will need to address these, especially if all 23 activities − which competitive members will want − are to be provided. After all I’ve said, I sincerely hope clubs do take the scheme up – I think it’s a good idea with much to recommend it.

(Editorial comment: This article was written before lockdown and, of course, right now no clubs are doing face-to-face training or exams. Similarly, there are no rallies, club meetings, field days, etc. So, many of the BE activities will, of necessity, have to wait until things start to return to normal.)