On a cold weekend in January, a group of youths and adults gathered for a long weekend at the Radio Club of Tacoma clubhouse to practice the art of amateur radio operation. For some of the nine youth, ages 13-18, this was their first introduction to ham radio. Others had been introduced to the hobby during summer activities at Camp Quest NorthWest. For one young enthusiast, this was an opportunity to study for his general after earning his technician license at last year’s event. 

The adult volunteers at Radio Weekend 2025 arrived with a similar range of experiences. Three adult volunteers (including two 18 year old’s among the group described above) joined the campers studying for their technician licenses. Several others had earned their entry level licenses the year prior and studied for their general. At least two volunteers studied for their extra licenses. 

Amateur was not the only style of radio that the campers got to practice. A field trip on Saturday took us to the KTQA studio in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood. Here the campers got to record station ID’s, introduce their own hand picked music, and put on their own talk show. They even performed an old time style radio drama, hastily generated by AI, about a ham radio operator turned private investigator. (I’m told that the next revision will actually include a human touch and, notably missing this time, a third act. Stay tuned!)

On Sunday, the group took a break from studying to visit the local community center pool. (We thought about turning this into another lesson about waves, but we needed a break from studying.) 

New Sticker Alert!

We would like to give the biggest shoutout and thank you to our amazing volunteer, Abby from Ohio! She has been working so hard to make our Summit 2024 dreams a reality when it comes to swag and quirky taglines.

She exceeded our vision and came up with 5 designs to go along with several of the taglines that were discussed at Summit. Oh, did we mention there’s more to come??