Orion Online

Orion Troop attended its first jamboree last week, held at Thorpe le Soken in sunny Essex. We joined some 10,000 other young people from a wide range of units, including cubs, scouts, explorers, brownies, guides and rangers and of course, many attended from overseas.

The jamboree was hosted on farmland which had been divided up into sub-camps. We were on the Red Panda subcamp, denoted by our red scarf and badge.

Scouts were involved in a wide range of activities including:

• It's a Knockout!
• Water Activities
• Challenge Activities
• Incident Challenge
• Eco Experience

...and lots more besides.

Here are just a few photographs showing what the Scouts got upto over the week.

More information can be found on the Essex International Jamboree website.

A quick walk down the High Street from the car-park to Sun Corner, then everyone on the grass for a sing song, quick chat, National Anthem, then the parade of Cubs' Dragons and Scouts' Knights on Horses'.

 

Videos

On the 7th of March 3rd Billericay Orion Scout Troop joined other troops in the district for a 4 mile night hike. We started from 1st Runwell scout hut near Wickford. Each group headed off from a staggered start at 8 o’clock.

 This evening, Scouts learnt how to whip and splice a piece of rope as part of their work towards the Pioneers badge. Scouts learnt how to tie a West Country whipping, a Common whipping and some, a Sailmakers whipping.

Scouts were also shown how to do an Eye Splice. Scouts worked collaboratively to Eye Splice a piece of rope. See below:

Ben applies his knowledge of a Common whipping on his piece of rope...

As you can see, Ben has made a very tidy job of it!

Jack shows great concentration in preparing his West Country whipping.

Scouts enjoyed making whippings so much that some have taken lengths of rope home to tidy up each end.

Jonathan Furness

 The Scouts have been learning how to tie six basic knots.

1. Reef knot
2. Bowline
3. Clove Hitch
4. Sheet Bend
5. Round Turn and Two Half Hitches
6. Timber Hitch

and how to tie two lashings,

1. Square lashing
2. Sheer lashing

To help reinforce some of this work, what better than to build a Sedan Chair and hold a competition. We know that when kids have to tie their own safety knots, it tends to focus the mind a little more. We thought the same might be true if they had to tie their own lashings and then be carried on the chair at speed!

I think the pictures say it all. (NB. Click on each image to get a larger picture)

Congratulations go to Flo, Joseph, Liam, Ben, Tom, Ben and team manager, Peter Taylor for putting in a fantastic effort this evening whilst competing in the Billericay and Wickford Scout Swimming Gala. This annual event takes place at Gloucester Park Swimming Pool in Basildon and is one of the highlights in the Scout calendar. A good number of troops in the district were also present, and Orion Troop were up against some excellent swimmers. 

Although this is a team effort and points are awarded to every scout who turns up for the event, there were some notable successes in the races that took place.

Ben H. came 3rd in the semi-finals of breaststroke and 2nd in backstroke semi-finals.

Liam came 5th in the final of backstroke.

Flo came 4th in backstroke and 5th in freestyle.

It is fair to say that there were some pretty exhausted swimmers after the relay race which concluded the evenings competition.

Let's hope we can get more swimmers from the troop to participate next year, maybe the trophy will come back to 3rd Billericay after years of success in the past?

Jonathan Furness
Assistant Scout Leader

Scouts at Orion Troop had a fun packed evening discovering that little kids CAN lift big kids. They learnt how to use levers and pulleys to gain mechanical advantage. However, you never get something for nothing so in order to lift something heavy, you still have to do the same amount of work, but it requires less effort each time you move it. With pulleys, you have to pull the rope through the pulleys much further than the distance of the object being lifted. Similar is true with levers. A lever at the lifting end is moved much further than the object being lifted.

These photographs will give you some idea of what we did.

(Click on each photograph for a larger image)

Today I have finished the new Orion Online logo. I have been playing around with Adobe FlashCS3 recently for my GCSE ICT work, so I thought I would make a animated GIF for the website.

I hope you like it!

As a troop, we decided that we would undergo a fitness programme lasting 4 weeks in preparation for the District Swimming Gala at the end of the month.

We chose four activities:

• squat thrusts
• throwing a ball with a chest pass
• step-ups
• sit-ups / press-ups

Over a period of four weeks, the Scouts completed each of the four activities. They had to complete as many repetitions as possible within a minute, the results of which were collated and recorded.