We Own Adventure

Scouting News for the DC Metro Area

The Scouter Digest Staff

STEM Lab 314 in Powhatan

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Powhatan District welcomes a brand new STEM Scouts Lab this fall! This is the District’s first STEM Scouts Lab, and following in similar vein as several other NCAC Labs, the group picked a unit number with some mathematical significance: 314.

Lab 314 is led by wonderful leaders of Pack 159 who took the initiative to start this standalone STEM program. The first meeting was Lab Safety & Orientation, as is required for every STEM Scout year. Then, last week, the Lab met to begin its’ first activity module of the year – all about Wildlife Sciences.

The STEM Scouts received their individual activity kits, but they met in a classroom all wearing masks for the Lab meeting.

This first module is titled “Into the Wild” and is described as: Warm blood, cold blood, bones or no bones, these Scouts will go into the wild to discover the variety of animals that inhabit our planet. Scouts will first explore the biomes of this world and then determine which animal calls each biome home. From there, they will get their “gloves dirty” to experience the food chain in person by dissecting an owl pellet and investigate various bird adaptations. Scouts will get to see how long an alligator actually is, discover which amphibian is clear, and end by building an aquatic marine biome ecosystem, also known as a coral reef!

Up next, they’ll be exploring aerodynamics with a module called “A Flying Fluid”!

 

Leave No Trace Trainer courses this fall

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NCAC will be hosting three Leave No Trace Trainer courses this fall for scouts and scouters. These courses will be hybrid with an online session on Monday night and an in-person session on Saturday.

Purpose of this Course

Participants in the Trainer Course learn Leave No Trace skills and ethics as well as techniques for educating others about these low impact practices. Research has shown that this course significantly improves participant knowledge and understanding of how Leave No Trace protects the outdoor places we love. The goal of this course is to teach students taking the course how to introduce the concept of Outdoor Ethics in a fun and engaging way to a group with little experience in outdoor ethics. It should help youth and adults at all program levels understand the general principles behind Scouting’s outdoor ethics program. Graduates of a Trainer Course are prepared to lead Outdoor Ethics Orientation and BSA Leave No Trace 101 courses and to offer Leave No Trace Awareness Workshops to their community.

We recommend that youth complete this course before serving as in the troop Outdoor Ethics Guide position.

Who should attend?

This course will be of interest to any youth or registered Scouter who is associated with either implementing or training for any BSA outdoor program at any level. It is also well-suited for anyone who would like to pass on the knowledge of how to treat the outdoors and protect its beauty for others to enjoy. Youth must be at least 14 years old. Youth must be willing and able to conduct themselves appropriately for an adult training experience that is tightly scheduled and highly interactive.

Course Structure

This course will take place in three parts.

The first part of the course is offered using a combination of online self-study modules. This portion of the course will begin about 10 days before the final outdoor portion of the course. During this portion of the course, students will also prepare a 10–15-minute lesson which they will present to other students in their assigned patrol during the outdoor session of the course. This portion of the course will take approximately 6 hours to complete.

The second part of the course is a one-hour online Zoom meeting held the Monday before the Saturday outdoor portion of the course. At this meeting, students will accomplish two goals. They will review with an instructor how they plan to present their lesson on Saturday. This is also when meal planning for the Saturday session will be done.

The final part of the course is an all-day outdoor session on a Saturday. During this session, students will:

  • Present to their fellow patrol members the lessons they have prepared
  • Practice Leave No Trace cooking techniques
  • Learn about Leave No Trace activities and games
  • Learn how to use education to help others reduce their outdoor recreation impacts
  • Share ideas with other students and instructors
  • Learn about the resources available to help spread the message of Leave No Trace
  • Prepare an action plan for how you will use what they’ve learned

Note: Additional course details will be emailed to participants a few weeks prior to the course.

Scout Day at Nationals Park

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On August 15th, over 750 Scouts, Scouters, and family members joined the Washington Nationals for Scout Day. Besides the home team red, the stands were dotted with BSA tan, Cub Scout blue, Venturing green, and for the first time STEM Scout white. The STEM Scouts took center stage and field in their lab coats to conduct the flag ceremony and show thousands of fans a video about the BSA’s newest program. Other Packs and Troops used the occasion to conduct summer celebrations, recruitment activities, and even a Wood Badge beading ceremony.

Powhatan STEM Chair Michael Hanson received his Wood Badge beading in the stands at Nat’s Park during Scout Day.

 

Lab Managers Marcus Martin (9941) and Burt Wagner (991) are recognized for their successful Lab year during COVID and growing the Program Council-wide

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interest in STEM Scouts is growing in the National Capital Area Council with additional labs starting this fall. Please visit www.stemscouts.org or contact Trisha, NCAC Director of STEM and Exploring, at stem@ncacbsa.org to learn more about starting a lab in your area.

STEM Scouts Honor Guard made up of Marco Martin (9941, front left), Lizzie Hanson (9941, front right), Chris Hanson (9941, back left), and Andrew Wagner (991, back right).

Watch the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxWvbcXpBzs

STEM Scout Honor Guard setting up on the field at National’s Park

 

You’re Invited: NESA Networking Luncheon

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Submitted by: Brett Coffee and Conor Russo.

Did you know that NESA-DC hosts free networking luncheons for local Eagle Scouts on the second Thursday of most months? NESA-DC started these lunches to meet and connect with other Eagle Scouts, and hear from fellow Eagles who are doing something interesting, noteworthy, or even extraordinary.

NESA DC Eagle Scout Lunch with Astronaut Tom Jones

We’ve had astronauts, high ranking government officials, adventurers, people with careers you never knew existed, and people you never thought you’d meet.  The series was started by Merritt Green and for many years was hosted in Tysons Corner, VA.


Eagle Scout luncheons on Zoom have brought our speaker series showcasing the continuing contributions of Eagle Scouts to a broader community who can attend from across the country and globe.

When the pandemic hit, we decided to move our luncheons to Zoom.  We got a wider audience, and people didn’t have to suffer through DC traffic.  More importantly, it became much easier to get really interesting speakers.

While it might look easy, there’s a lot of preparation behind the scenes to pull off each lunch, which occurs monthly except for July, August, and December.

There’s no cost to join us for lunch, but you provide the lunch itself.  There’s the ability to network and interact with most speakers, but we do remind you that Scouts are courteous.

NESA DC Eagle Scout Lunch with Eagle Scout Tara Presnall

The lunches begin at 12:00 pm, and you can sign up here.  Conor Russo is our luncheon coordinator, and he does a great job lining up interesting speakers, moderating the discussion, and connecting the audience.

NESA DC Eagle Scout Lunch with Morgan Sullivan, Executive Managing Director, JLL

Although the lunches are free, please consider making a donation to Scouting at www.ncacbsa.org/give  to help support our luncheons as well as the great Scouting experience.  Who knows—you might be helping a future luncheon speaker write their story!

And if you or someone you know are interested in being a guest speaker at one of our lunches, or you have a suggestion or idea, please contact us at NESADC@NCACBSA.org.

For updates and registration on upcoming networking luncheons, follow us on Facebook, add us on LinkedIn, or check out our schedule on the National Capital Area Council’s Calendar of Events.

Explorer Post 1010 Wins Top STEM Competitions!

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Submitted by: Bob Ekman

Explorer Post 1010 is engaged in four national engineering programs – The American Rocketry Challenge, FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics, Botball Educational Robotics, and the UAS4STEM Drone Competition. In 2021, we worked through the pandemic and did very well in all four programs. Our robotics teams scored among the top teams, but our rocketry and drone teams were at the at the top nationally. The tenacity of the teams through many long months of the pandemic has proved to be their strength. Add to that the dedication of several adult leaders in providing the logistics so the teams could meet and succeed in their challenge.

Bob Ekman is the over-all advisor for Post 1010. Tom May, aided by his wife Beth May, are the mentors for the drone team. Vince Camobreco is a mentor for the rocketry team. Neal Perkins is a mentor for the FIRST robotics team. Bob is also the mentor for the Botball team.

Post 1010 has been active since 1997, with hundreds of teen passing through the program. We currently have about 34 registered members. They do well every year, but this year has been extraordinary.

The American Rocketry Challenge

Explorer Post 1010 registered three teams in the 2020 The American Rocketry Challenge (TARC). The main web site is https://rocketcontest.org/. The challenge is to fly to a specific altitude and then descend to the ground in a specific total flight time. We also had to carry a large raw egg and not receive any cracks. We started with experiments focused on the challenge in the fall of 2019. We recruited several new members for 2020 and designed and built our competition rockets. We started testing our rockets during the winter of 2020.

Then the pandemic hit and we suspended the program until September 2020. We used the same 2020 challenge for 2021, but dropped one of our teams because we lost several seniors. By May 17, 2021, both teams completed three qualification flights with scores low enough to be invited to the national fly-off in June. The finals are for the top 100 teams from the 615 registered teams across the US.

Our teams traveled to the Great Meadow field in The Plains, VA, on June 13. They both successfully completed two flights. The first one to 775 feet and descent time between 39 and 42 seconds. The second one to 825 feet and descent time between 41 and 44 seconds. Our first team had two flights that were almost perfect, getting a score of 3 and 5 for a combined score of 8. The second team had good altitude scores, but descended a little too fast. At an on-line ceremony on June 28, the first team was ranked 2nd place nationally and awarded $17,000. They lost to a team in Oregon that scored 7.7. Our second team was ranked 42nd.

UAS4STEM Drone Competition

Explorer Post 1010 registered a teams in the 2020 UAS4STEM drone competition. While we started preparing for the spring and summer competition, the pandemic caused us to delay until 2021. In the challenge, the team must fly their drone both autonomously and remote controlled. They needed to find several targets which are out of site from the team, and then drop water balloons filled with paint on the target.

In April, our team made an on-line presentation which was rated highly and gave them an invitation to the national competition. The national competition was held in conjunction with the AirVenture Fly-In festival at Oshkosh WI in August 2021. Our team competed with a dozen other teams from across the nation. They gave another impressive presentation and successfully performed their flight operations, hitting the targets several times. At the festival in August, they were awarded first place nationally and $2,500.

Test Your Orienteering Skills Oct. 23!

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All Troops & Venturing crews are challenged to test (and hone!) their map skills at the 45th Annual Maryland Scout Orienteering Day on Oct. 23 at Patuxent River Park near Upper Marlboro. NCAC troops from Virginia and Maryland always do well, winning 15 of the top 22 awards the last time here; in 2019 over 500 youth, 160 adults orienteered. Troop 540 from Howard County won the troop award in 2020.

Units register online here. Our self-guided map activities in the morning are designed for beginners. About half of the attendees camp one or two nights. No Cubs, no Webelos.