Clubs and Associations

What use is an F-call? In my travels across the country, I come in touch with new amateurs on a regular basis. It's an exciting way to find out what brings people to Amateur Radio and it regularly provides brand new insights and ideas about things that people are doing and trying. Often their passionate explanation is accompanied by photocopies of articles, or a website, or a magazine, or a library of information that holds the key to some insight they experienced and went on to expand on. As you might know, I'm a member of the Wireless Institute of Australia. It's an organisation that's been around for over a hundred years and is the oldest Amateur Radio Society in the world. I became a member because I was broadcasting the news in VK6 to help out another amateur who was going on leave and I figured that it would behove me to become a member. Until then I'd asked around about the WIA and was given mixed messages about the benefits of becoming a member. I'm telling you this, not because I want you to become a WIA member, that's up to you. I'm telling you this, because for me, at the time, that's where my interest in Amateur Radio Societies stopped. Being introduced to other amateurs and seeing the articles and magazines they were using as a source made me consider that there were other societies, associations and clubs around that I'd never heard of. The ARRL seems to be the loudest, but there is the RSGB, and no doubt other such institutions around. There are clubs of Morse operators, QRP clubs, 10m clubs, beacon clubs and associations and many other. Many I've only come in contact with as a direct result of wanting to learn, try or test something. If you've had a license for years and know about all the clubs that you could ever deal with you may want to share some of that with others who are just learning; alternatively you might just have started with a new license or project and be on the look-out for some other shared experience. Becoming a member of a club or association has the opportunity to expose you to other skills and knowledge and that can only be good for Amateur Radio. I'm Onno VK6FLAB