Frank17

I am a SM from Greater Pittsburgh Council with BSA Troop 380. Been with the Troop for 3 years; was with the pack before that for 4 years as a DL / Camping Chair. Son is a Life scout, on his way to Eagle. I volunteer for a lot of places (church, school, sports, local museums), but probably get the most back from scouting. Love everything, except the paperwork involved.

I have a small portable weather radio I purchased over 20 years ago from Radio Shack. It runs off a (V battery, has 3 switched for the 3 different weather channels and a volume control. Never a problem, and have used it all over the US including remote areas in CO, PA, AZ, and MT, where my cell phone was completely dead..

Funny. Still working on mine, so I still have 16 months to go before I am in the chair.

Our troop uses Troopmaster (which we love), and we discussed using them, but decided to stay with the handwritten look. First there was the card quality, which is a thicker stock on the BSA issued cards. Second was the too impersonal look, which we liked the handwritten look (our advancement chair has nice penmanship). Finally, troopmaster is run by our database manager, and advancement is taken care of by our advancement chair. They decided it was easier to stay with the old way, rather than coordinate and do something new.

Eamonn: You are correct in stating the scout does not meet with his BOR til the end. I mis-sppoke. He will need to petition our District Advancement Chair who will determine if he can get his BOR, if he is within the 6 month deadline. As far as I know, this has not negatively impacted any scouts yet. Maybe this is the Chairman's way of "lighting a fire" under the scouts who are languishing. If so, I think it can be done in other ways. We have our monthly Eagle BORs this week. I am planning on attending for one of our scouts and will be bringing along the Eagle Project Workbook and the Advancement Committee Policies and Procedures Pamphlet to ask them to show me where it is. I do not want to be confrontational, but I do not feel this will help our District (and our Scouts) if this is applied too rigorously. Frank

Hoot....hoot....hoot! We are the owls, the mighty, mighty owls, and everywhere we go, people want to know, whoo we are, whooo we are....the owls! Frank - NE-IV-214

Just went to our district roundtable which had a presentation on Trail to Eagle & Eagle Project approval requirements. This is the third year they have done this, and a new requirement just popped up. They now have instituted a 6 month deadline for Eagle Project completion starting from when the project is approved. If the project is not complete within 6 months, the scout must petition the board to be able to continue, or redo their project. They claim this is a National requirement. Does anyone know what source they obtained this from? Has anyone run into anything similar? I agree that trying to have your Eagle project complete within 6 months is a good idea, but to require and penalize scoute who cannot make this seems excessive (particularly when a scout can work on a single merit badge for years). Frank