PODVIG begins with an outdoor military vehicle and aviation museum: three jet planes, a helicopter, two armored personnel carriers, three tanks, two cannons, two naval cannons, five “Ground-to-Air” missiles, radar array and much more. Also you can find a sophisticated obstacle course, sporting and skydiving training trainers and a Memorial to Perished Pilots – everything of which was constructed by the cadets themselves. Club’s own go-cart track was built across the road. PODVIG occupies over 16000 square feet of space in a five-story building (a part of the ground floor and the basement).

    The structure of the club resembles that of a military detachment. This makes management and daily operation easier for the cadets in command. This also gives an incentive, a drive to go for something bigger, to grow in ranks and obtain new duties. This way makes sustaining the discipline much easier too. Thus the assistance of the adults is reduced to necessary minimum.

    Magadan MSTC PODVIG is in fact a center of military and patriotic work with the youth, and requests from other regions of Russia asking for assistance and sharing experience are quite a frequent occurrence. The club is unique by all standards – by scale of operations and by the intensity of activities. Tours of club’s facilities for schools and college students and even kids aged 4 to 6 years old are being done on a monthly basis. PODVIG also serves as a center for various meetings, youth activities and other social events.

    It is noteworthy that the work of the club is being conducted using the latest hardware. It is in possession of club’s own press center, visual effects studio, computer and tuition departments. PODVIG is a long-term supplier and distributor of information bulletins, wall newspapers, booklets, calendars and other printed matter among both civilian population and military personnel, as well as movies (on regional TV, CDs and video cassettes). The goal of such printed and video data is promotion of military/patriotic activities and healthy way of life. Every more or less important event in the club’s life is pictured in wall newspapers that are printed in the press center on the spot and hung on special stands (A3 paper with excessive use of visual special effects and comic-book-style pictures). Such lively and modern kinds of production please the eye and allow to rapidly inform the community about current events, as well as recount and spread existing working experience.

    Of course, not everything is a piece of cake in PODVIG’s existence – working with teenagers is never a piece of cake. Some kids – from broken homes or with bad heredity – require huge amounts of attention and effort to have at least some effect on them. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, or it takes really long to happen. But every kid in PODVIG should get a chance to change for the better and learn something right and useful. To reach this goal, kids’ parents, club graduates, war veterans and servicemen are being actively involved into the upbringing process – it is way easier to persuade a child to change his world outlook when doing that jointly.

    In almost thirty years Magadan MSTC PODVIG has accumulated an enormous volume of experience and knowledge. A lot has been done. Club’s archives and museum store a vast number of unique documentation, thousands of pictures, tens of movies. This experience is in demand by several generations of boys, and those who had been the first cadets now take their sons here. The necessity and success of PODVIG’s activity is proven by life itself.