April 2026 – Strategic priorities update

| March 23, 2026

Practical activities: the key to engagement

Photo 1: Radio amateur at RSGB Convention workshop Photo 2: Father and daughter take build in kit building exercise at Hamvention

We have mentioned many times before that we see doing practical things as the key to engagement, and this belief is front and centre of the RSGB high-level strategy.

From our involvement in National Coding Week to our Outreach activities, from our Youth activities to the RSGB National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park, all these things are about rolling your sleeves up, having a go, and getting involved.

Developing our practical activities in 2025

At the RSGB Convention in 2025, we expanded on the practical activities in the programme and even included a full-day workshop the Friday before the main event – marketed as “Take your programming skills up a notch”. On the Friday we looked in some detail at coding skills associated with a number of DDS products from Analog Devices and made a signal generator capable of frequencies up to 4.4GHz. In the afternoon we embraced the fairly new concept of “Vibe Coding” where we focused on requirements rather than code authorship; using an LLM to generate the code for us automatically. This day was a lot of fun and a great learning exercise for those who attended.

We also included workshops in the main Convention programme; one was an Antenna Workshop where we looked at some theory related to transmission lines, SWR, dipoles and then each attendee went on to construct a 49:1 ‘un-un’ for an end-fed half-wave antenna for portable operations.

For the second year running we also ran an introductory course in Arduino programming where we looked at basic coding skills. Those who attended learned about the basics of what a Microcontroller was, how we can interface to one and then built code to go from flashing an on-board LED to displaying text on an LCD, to generating low frequency sine, square and triangular waves. We touched on interface protocols in common use and did some real coding and debugging on the fly.

At each workshop the hardware components used by the attendees were theirs to take home to continue experimentation after the event.

As part of our ‘reimagination’ Growth workstream we have introduced a new column into RadCom called Experimenters’ Corner where I hope to inspire members to ‘have a go’ at a wide range of practical activities, from coding to 3D printing to antenna construction. I’m also trying hard in the April and May columns to get people to have a go at using this new-fangled AI stuff to generate code for us – there is no longer any excuse for “I don’t do software” because you really don’t need to any more. Vibe Coding is the future and there has never been a better time to be an experimenter – the technology available to us is simply breathtaking if you will only take the time to look.

The RSGB are also trying to transform our image at the National Hamfest; rather than presenting ourselves as a committee-based organisation, we are keen to use the event as a ‘shop front’ for the Society’s activities. Last year we made significant progress by having a host of practical activities on display from the TinyGS LEO satellite groundstation to a 3D-printed mock-up of the moon with a working CubeSat in close proximity. We also ran a buildathon on the Saturday where youngsters (and some not so young) built FM radio kits.

Feedback on the practical activities we put on continues always to be positive, and those who attended the workshops at the Convention or visited the demonstrations at the Hamfest took new ideas away with them to build on themselves or at their club.

What would you like to see in 2026?

We are now starting to plan the main RSGB events for 2026, so I would encourage you, our members, to have your say in what you would like to see in the way of practical demonstrations at the Hamfest and hands-on activities at the Convention. We have a great deal of very skilled resources at our disposal, so the options are almost endless.

To give you a flavour, current ideas for the Convention include:

  • Micro Python programming using the Raspberry Pi Pico

  • Low noise antennas for the urban environment

  • Microcontroller Timer/Counter functionality and using them for frequency counting

  • GPS disciplining oscillators/counters basics and practice

  • Building a practical signal generator with graphical interface using a DDS

  • AI in Amateur Radio

  • Linux – an introduction

  • 3D printing basics

However, I would encourage anyone with ideas in this arena to please get in touch, as the more ideas we have in the pot, the more we can continue to prove that “doing practical things is the key to engagement”

Mark Jones, G0MGX

Board Director

strategy@rsgb.org.uk

Category: RSGB Notices, RSGB Strategic Priorities