With fingers resting on the mixing console, radio announcer Jayson Gardner looks the real deal.
He smoothly spins the next CD and back-announces performer and song, he talks about the weather and events cancelled because of the rain, conducts interviews and engages in a bit of banter with fellow presenter Ben Scott-Smith.
The only difference the Gazette can see between Jayson and Ben and their professional counterparts in radioland are that the two young men are still at school, Jayson in Year 10 and Ben in Year 7.
Jayson and Ben, along with a small group of fellow students from Katoomba High School, present a weekly radio show from the RBM FM radio studio in Katoomba.
The group come up with ideas for topics to talk about, local identities to interview, music to play and together work up a script for each Wednesday's hour-long show from 1pm.
Their fellow announcers who share some of the script reading include Irene Kirpichnikov and Darkon Cain, both Year 11 students at the school.
Irene confessed she was nervous the first time on air but "you get used to it pretty quickly".
Darkon, who started with the show last term, said it was a great experience and gave him a chance to "get out there and try something new".
Ben, who has to improvise when one of the scripted items is called off because of the weather, appears to have no trouble speaking off the cuff. He also has a regular segment every Tuesday where he spruiks what will be on the following day's show.
Jayson said the hardest part was not operating the panel or speaking on air but "trying to get the script organised".
The program is a way of "further connecting our school to the community", he said. And while none of the four is immediately considering a future in journalism, they are having fun giving it a go.
Music teacher and radio maestro Daniel Barrett said the program gave the students a broad range of experiences.
"They are learning about writing, literacy through creating articles, they are developing their community spirit by promoting what's happening in the community and it gives them a lot of confidence," he said.
The two co-presenters, Jayson and Ben, were also learning about audio engineering, using a mixing console and about microphone placement, as well as interviewing skills.
"They also discuss ideas and whether they would be appropriate or not. They're really learning things that they wouldn't normally have learnt until they were young adults."