A foray into the do-it-yourself world

On display at last weekend’s Eurisko exhibition in Melbourne was the hands-on aspect of Amateur Radio. The well-presented WIA stand was designed to showcase Amateur Radio to a select audience and hopefully link up with those who can see an application for their interests.

The paying visitors attracted to the Eurisko exhibition were mainly of a younger age group interested in making, crafting and do-it-yourself activities. There were many stands including those with basic soldering, 3D printing, chemistry, computers, electronics, robotics, rocketry, and self-help learning groups. A few also held workshops during the two-day event.
Fitting right in was the WIA stand that had working displays of Amateur Television, homebrew equipment design and construction, a video display of various aspects of Amateur Radio plus information on how to become a radio amateur. New to them was Amateur Radio’s ability to handle telemetry for experiments, and that some of us are already into balloon launches and other practical experimentation.

Spending a lot of time at the WIA stand was Dr Zoz Brooks (pictured above), a special guest at the exhibition from Fab Lab Adelaide and co-host of the internationally telecast Discovery Channel’s Time Warp show, devoted to high speed imaging of natural and scientific phenomena.
The Adelaide-based engineer, artist, robot expert, hacker and teacher spent well over an hour with those from the WIA to learn all he could about Amateur Radio and like many visitors thought about what modern Amateur Radio offers their interests and how to become a radio amateur.

The WIA hopes that collaboration with other do-it-yourself interest groups can be achieved.
Tapping into a near-perfect audience, with targeted messages delivered by individuals with a high degree of interpersonal skills, the stand effectively showed off what Amateur Radio has to offer. Participation in the Eurisko Melbourne exhibition is in line with a recent WIA email survey of radio clubs on the broad topic of how best to promote modern Amateur Radio.
A YouTube presentation by Peter VK3YE is available at the following Link

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