The USKA (the Swiss amateur radio association) has a new website. Six months of development, built entirely from scratch, four languages, a login with your callsign. I took my time looking around, the way I actually use it day to day: with a specific question in mind. And that is where the problem starts.
What is new
First, what the relaunch announcement says and what I like. The old platform has been replaced, not just refreshed. Members log in with their callsign as the username, every member automatically gets an @uska.ch forwarding address, the membership data now lives with Fairgate, and for login questions there is a bot called «Uski». The translations come from DeepL. Project lead is Andreas HB9BLA, the new webmaster is Tayfun HB3YPJ. Bugs and missing content can be reported to webmaster@uska.ch.
The home page divides the world into three doors: «Discover» for people who are not on the air yet, «Radio amateurs» for us, «Members» for the closed area. For someone hearing about amateur radio for the first time, that is a good way in. Calm, tidy, no association-speak. If you send a school class or a curious neighbour to the site, you have nothing to be embarrassed about.
And the contest calendar now has a subscription: Google, iCal, Outlook, as an .ics export. The old site lacked that, and it is genuine progress.
What I was looking for
I am not a beginner. I go to the association’s site because I need something specific. Two examples.
First: the repeater list, which I need to load into my radio, not to look at. The path on the new site: Radio amateurs, then «Repeater list and band plans», then «HB Voice Repeater List». There it is, 308 entries, with QRG, callsign, QTH, canton, CTCSS and status, as a table on the page. And that is where it ends. No PDF, no CSV, no CHIRP file, nothing I can get into a radio or an app. Type out 308 lines or copy them from the web page and tidy them up yourself. The list exists, but the reason you fetch it from the association in the first place has vanished.
Second: the contest calendar. It shows 35 entries and a subscription, fine. For September it says: «No event this month». In September. The month in which the IARU Field Day SSB took place and the USKA itself reminded everyone on 8 September of the deadlines for the Field Day logs. What I used to have on the site, an overview of HF and VHF/UHF, of our own and international contests, I now only find as remnants: under «Contests» there are the USKA’s own HF and VHF/UHF contests, ARDF, awards and the special contests, each on its own sub-page. If you are looking for a set of rules, you click your way there via Radio amateurs, Contests, USKA Contests HF. That works. But the calendar that tells me what is happening on the bands next weekend does not.
The real problem
I build websites myself and I know what a relaunch costs: every page gets touched, every piece of content gets re-sorted, and in the end something is always missing. I do not hold that against anyone. What bothers me is the direction. The new site is built for people who are not on the air yet. For those who are, it has become a brochure.
A national association’s website has two jobs. It should bring newcomers in, yes. And it should be the reference you open every few days: the repeater list to load, contest dates, band plan, rules, the archive. Exactly the things for which there is otherwise no reliable Swiss place on the web. The first job has been done well. The second got left behind on the way from the old system to the new one, and I see no sign on the site that anyone has noticed. There is no «where do I find things now» page, no note about missing downloads, only the webmaster’s address.
When an association invests six months in a website, I expect the twenty things active members call up most often to be there on day one. Not pretty, but there. A download button under the repeater table is not a project, it is an afternoon.
What I am reporting
I am not just writing this here. The announcement says feedback goes to webmaster@uska.ch, and the webmaster will get mine today, with three points: the repeater list as a CSV and CHIRP file to download, the contest calendar filled with the international HF and VHF/UHF dates, and a transition page that says where the old content now lives. These are not wishes, they are the basic functions many of us visit the association’s site for in the first place.
And I am asking you: what did you regularly fetch from the old site, and can you find it on the new one? Write it in the comments or straight to the webmaster. The more concrete examples come together, the sooner the brochure turns back into a tool.
As of 19 September 2026. This is my view after a first look around, not a complete comparison of all old and new content. If I have missed a download, I will gladly correct it here.
73 de Chris, HB9HJI
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