July 2003 - arrl-odv - reflector.arrl.org

[ARRL-ODV:9074] Anne Arundel County, MD RFI Ruling
by N3AKD＠aol.com 11 Jul '03

11 Jul '03

This article bears on the RFI ruling that I recently sent around. The planned appeal by the county is highly unlikely to be successful. Chris > > FCC unit throws out county cell-phone law Arundel vows to appeal ruling to > full > commission > > By Andrea F. Siegel > Sun Staff > Originally published July 9, 2003 > > Federal regulators have thrown out an Anne > Arundel County ordinance aimed at mitigating > cellular telephone interference in local public safety > transmissions. > > The ruling, made public Monday, is a win for the > wireless industry. But county officials vowed to > appeal the ruling to the full Federal > Communications Commission because it bars the > county from preventing towers and networks > where the county believes they would cause > interference. > > The ruling by the FCC's Wireless > Telecommunications Bureau says federal law > supercedes the county's move last year to use its > "traditional zoning functions" to regulate radio > frequency interference. > > But the FCC's bureau also ordered Cingular > Wireless LLC and Nextel Communications Inc. to > meet with the county and for all to report back in > 30 and then 90 days on progress in alleviating > interference. Those efforts, which have gone on for > more than a year, have reduced known "dead > spots" in the public safety communications system > from 61 to 21. > > Nationally, news accounts have highlighted > interference with public safety communications > from the rapidly growing networks of > communications towers whose signals overpower > police radios, some of which predate the wireless > boom. > > In 1997, Anne Arundel began experiencing > problems from wireless networks with the 800 MHz band used for police, > sheriff and fire communications. > > In 2001, a consultant found that the radio failures clustered around Nextel > and Cingular sites. Nextel made moves to work with the county, but Cingular > "initially declined" to provide key information, although it since has > worked > with the county, the ruling says. The county, planning to upgrade its radio > system, amended its law, and Cingular filed the challenge. > > In a 16-page opinion and order, the FCC bureau wrote that it is worried > about wireless interference with public safety transmissions and said the > FCC > is working toward alleviating such issues around the country. > > "Particularly in light of recent events and the nation's heightened concern > regarding homeland security, we expect carriers will make every effort to > assist local governments addressing public safety interference issues, and > we > are committed to taking an active role where necessary to assure that such > cooperation occurs," wrote John B. Muleta, chief of the bureau. > > In a statement, Cingular said it was pleased with the ruling. > > "Cingular and other carriers have worked with the County when its system > has experienced [interference]," the statement said. "Cingular will continue > to > cooperate with the County." > > Nextel and the county have worked out an agreement on use of the airwaves > that should help, as should the county's upgrade to the public safety > communications system. But neither will cure the problem. > > Anne Arundel County Attorney Linda M. Schuett said the ruling is "huge" for > the county, which spent $300,000 to analyze the problem. The county > enacted a zoning law last year that denied carriers new sites unless they > certified that the transmissions would not interfere with the public safety > channel. > > "When police officers and firefighters cannot talk to each other, there is a > potential for someone dying," said Schuett. > > Although no injuries have been attributed to the problem in Anne Arundel, > she said, there have been problems. > > "There are areas where police officers know they cannot speak to each > other, and they won't stop a suspect in that area," Schuett said. > >

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[ARRL-ODV:9073] More reading - Standing Committees
by Tom Frenaye 11 Jul '03

11 Jul '03

Please also review the document Director Roderick sent out for the Executive Committee on June 13th [ARRL-ODV:8894]. This was a report from the EC in response to Minute 52 of the July 2002 Board meeting regarding Standing Committee structure. There were only a couple of comments on ODV after it was circulated. I don't believe it is the EC's intention to propose any change at this coming Board meeting, but clearly our Strategic Planning effort should help us to focus on how we run the organization - and Standing Committee structure may need change to match our plans. -- Tom ===== e-mail: k1ki(a)arrl.org ARRL New England Division Director http://www.arrl.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444

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[ARRL-ODV:9072] Re: Minute 56
by Dennis Bodson 11 Jul '03

11 Jul '03

Dave: Thanks Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ [mailto:dsumner@arrl.org] Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 1:20 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9067] Re: Minute 56 Dennis, Jim is referring to the report that was distributed on May 30 as ARRL-ODV:8830. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Dennis Bodson [mailto:bodsond@att.net] Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 1:13 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9066] Re: Minute 56 Jim: Do you mean your report? There is no attachment to this email. Thanks Dennis -----Original Message----- From: W5JBP(a)aol.com [mailto:W5JBP@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 12:45 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9065] Minute 56 I am making a special appeal for you to read the report above. It is comprehensive and represents a lot of work. Jim Haynie, W5JBP

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[ARRL-ODV:9071] Rinaldo Paper on Minute 64
by W3KD＠aol.com 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Greetings. Here is Paul Rinaldo's paper on conversion to regulation of subbands by bandwidth, rather than mode. As discussed in my report to the Board, this is a WORK IN PROGRESS and is not to be considered a final product. I think you will agree, however, that Paul has done his usual fine work on this to date. It reflects very little input from my office so far, but we will continue the project unless the Board sends us in a different direction. 73, Chris W3KD

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[ARRL-ODV:9070] Easier access to online BPL material
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Ed Hare has asked me to pass along the following information. Those that want to search the FCC Broadband Over Power Lines NOI comments can do so at the FCC Search Engine: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi Type in 03-104 in the search engine. A list of the hyperlinks to company and organizational filings and individual filing of more than 3 pages has been put up at: http://www.arrl.org/~ehare/rfi/plc/BPL_NOI_hyperlinks.html Dave K1ZZ

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[ARRL-ODV:9069] IN-News
by Kustosik, Lisa, KA1UFZ 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

IN-Newsletter Vol. 26, No. 27 July 9, 2003 Upcoming Meetings July 17th in Windsor, CT at 8:30am Board Leadership Development Session July 18-19 in Windsor, CT Board Meeting Development Campaign results to date are as follows: 2003 Spectrum Defense 657 donations $40,317 Avg $61.36 WRC-03 special campaign 775 donations $35,139 Avg $45.34 BPL special campaign 43 donations $33,346 Avg $776.48 Total 2003 Spectrum Defense 1475 donations $108,802 Avg $ 73.76 Education & Technology Fund 1452 donations $78,264 Avg $53.90 Historic Preservation (test) 14 donations $475 Avg $33.92 The BPL campaign is just beginning to see its first returns. Most of the 43 donations have come over the web as a result of the article that appeared on the ARRL website. A special letter to ARRL advertisers is being prepared. The Historic Preservation Fund test mailing may be overshadowed by the BPL issue. Preparations are underway for the next issue of the Legacy Circle Letter, promoting estate planning. The next issue will be mailed to existing Legacy Circle members and 4500 prospects. A new bequest commitment to ARRL came in last week. The renewal application for the CNCS grant for Year Two is underway and due at CNCS on July 14. Production/Editorial We checked printer's proofs for The FCC Rule Book, and we reordered QST View 1965-69 and Amateur Radio Today. We released the 2003 Central States Proceedings to the printer. Rick Lindquist wrote or edited several stories for the ARRL Web site, including a report (based on information from Dave Sumner) regarding the Final Acts of the World Radiocommunication Conference 2003, an ARISS contact with the Challenger Center in Indiana and the opening of the new 60 meter channels. The ARRL Letter and ARRL Audio News were not published on the holiday July 4. Dave Hassler completed his monthly Web column "ARRL-in-Action," composed a number of small briefs for the ARRLWeb and worked with several authors on upcoming Web feature articles. Sales & Marketing It has been brought to our attention that an individual or company is trying to sell subscriptions to QST "before the price increase." ARRL is currently not using any telemarketing activities to sell or renew memberships. Another twist to their sales approach is to allege to be a magazine reseller able to offer QST magazine less expensively than what our members pay us for membership. ARRL does not have any subscription company trying to sell QST. To date, we have heard from over a dozen members who have been contacted with these bogus offers. A few of them have been contacted two or three times. We continue to welcome member reports so that we may continue to locate the source of these calls. Although not perfect quite yet, progress is being made with the processing of backorders using the Siebel system. Individual customer orders are now processed without needing to manually split the order off into in-stock versus out-of-stock items. This one step has greatly improved our ability to process orders in a timely manner and reduce the amount of duplication and manual processing needed to handle backordered items. Bob Inderbitzen and Dennis Motschenbacher spent the short week following up on special requests and action items that had collected during their trips to the ARRL National Convention and Friedrichshafen, Germany. On Thursday, Bob prepared and distributed an email solicitation to help drive additional traffic to the ARRLWeb catalog throughout the July 4th holiday weekend. A free shipping offer was extended to members placing orders totaling $50 or more. Even before staff left for the long weekend, the solicitation was generating brisk ordering activity, and the fulfillment staff has been busy handling orders this week. Now available via the ARRLWeb catalog: AC Power Interference Handbook <http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=9055>. This book was written Marv Loftness, KB7KK. Bob secured a special agreement with the author that makes ARRL the exclusive distributor of this second edition. The timing of this new edition is opportune with current interest in broadband over power line (BPL) topics. Membership Services Awards Branch WAS QSL Cards Checked 300 RCCs 6 OTCs 4 L/T Member Inquiries 5 A-1 Operator Noms. 12 VUCC Initial Apps. 3 Grids 441 VUCC End. Apps. 1 Grids 22 VUCC Backfill Apps. 1 Grids 102 Awards Mailed 19 Also worked on report for MSD/BOD. Processing Status: Current or up to three weeks. For the coming week-Basic WAS awards for June, (foreign) WAC awards, VUCC awards processing/mailing, order 5-BWAS plates, and complete filing chores for the 50- and 60-year member awards-related correspondence from this year to date. Contest Branch The International DX Phone scores were merged and boxes prepared for the author and web. The International DX CW article was received and edited to send to Production and the web. Post Field-Day queries were handled. Manual updating of the Logs Received page for the 2003 June VHF QSO party continued. Some miscellaneous pins for several contests were shipped. DXCC Branch Weekly Report July 7, 2003 Beginning Cards 92,995 Cards Received 643 Cards Processed 13,135 Ending Cards 80,503 Applications Pending 633 Processing Time 6.9 Weeks Year-to-date (2003) Cards Received 251,843 Cards Returned 387,630 QRPs issued this week 1 QRPs issued total 297 DXCC is currently mailing applications received on May 19, 2003. DXCC is currently entering cards received on May 19, 2003. Dave Patton, NT1N, returned from Friedrichshafen after checking 214 DXCC applications with 29,286 QSOs. The DXCC system was malfunctioning last Tuesday and Wednesday. ATS was informed of the problem and with help from Andy and Don, the problem was resolved by Thursday. QSL Bureau QSL Service Status: Current. Cards mailed as of 07/06/03: 779,225. No cards were mailed this week. Heather Dzamba spent 6 hours conducting tours around HQ. Martin covered the morning bulletins & visitor operations at W1AW. Field & Educational Services French students on a Russian sailing vessel named Mir had a successful ARISS QSO. Kids at a Massachusetts Challenger Center enjoyed a terrestrial QSO with astronaut Barbara Morgan, KD5VNP. Rosalie assisted NASA in finalizing a revised lithograph on ARISS. She took part in a VRC telecon and commented on some of their draft reports. Regulatory Information John Hennessee assisted amateurs with local government zoning problems in Lancaster, PA (WB3BWF) and with a covenant restriction in Bullhead City, AZ (WA6KML). He updated the local government presentation page on our ARRL Web site with a new link to the affiliation between ARRL and the Citizens Corps, and linked stories on amateurs providing assistance in disasters within the last 6 months. He reports a number of last-minute questions on the 60-meter allocation and received favorable reports of amateur activity on that band. Field Organization/Public Service Team Leona Adams was in touch with recently-appointed SMs to help with the transitions and to ensure they have supplies and information to get started. She handled 25 Field appointments and their initial supplies along with a steady stream of SM expense reports. Steve Ewald learned from Louisiana Section officials that hams were on standby after Tropical Storm Bill came ashore bringing much rain and flooding. SMs talked up Field Day (promotional reports beforehand, summary reports after), and several kept the tradition of visiting as many of their Section Field Day sites as possible. Almost all Sections have seen activity via their electronic Section News and/or ARRL Web pages during June; only four Sections were quiet: Alaska, Los Angeles, Orange and Utah. Rosalie has named Bill Weatherford, KM5FT, as New Mexico SM to fulfill the remaining 6 months of Joe Knight's term; Joe stepped down because of his health. Chuck Skolaut received some reports on "opening night" activity on 60-meters. One OOC who was monitoring says that operations were going along pretty well. Chuck logged several reports about a possible intruder on 14317 kHz; much of this may be computer-related interference. Volunteer monitors also found a potential intruding signal at 14000 kHz. C-CE Howard Robins reports continuing progress by authors on lesson units for the future the RF Propagation course and the Antennas 101 course. He sent 848 emails to Certified Examiners and Certified Instructors in order to purge the data in our administration system. A by-product was finding some membership lapses. Howard invited them to renew because CEs and CIs must be members. His contact with the volunteers seemed to mean a lot to some of them, so he is looking at future periodic email for them. Jerry Ellis is continuing work on the field exam and class paper files. He matched mentor certificates with stipend checks to be mailed. He processed results from field exam sessions received recently. CNCS, UTC, and field exam grads were mailed their printed certificates, ID cards and refund checks (where appropriate). Amateur Radio Education & Technology Program Mark Spencer worked on refining the curriculum and correlating items to the National Education Standards for science. He will do the same for the math, language arts and social studies standards. He met with Mary Hobart about what statistics we should collect for use in finding funding for The Big Project. EmComm Grants Dan prepared materials for the upcoming ARECC Seminar at the Southeastern Division convention in Gainesville, GA. CNCS-sponsored emcomm course graduates total 1573. UTC-sponsored emcomm course stats follow: Class Registrations Grads Level I 216 7 Level II 364 200 Level III 244 107 73, Sincerely, Mark Wilson, K1RO Chief Operating Officer MW: lk Staff Absentee List Dave Sumner 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Mark Wilson 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Barry Shelley 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Mary Hobart 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Lisa Kustosik 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting Rosalie White 7/18-7/19 BOD Meeting Wayne Mills 7/18-7/19 BOD Meeting Jennifer Hagy 7/7-7/14 Vacation `` 7/21-7/22 Vacation Kristy Perillo 7/7-7/18 Vacation Dan Miller 7/10-7/13 SE Div Convention, Gainesville, GA `` 7/14-7/16 Vacation `` 7/25-7/27 Ft. Tuthill, AZ Hamfest `` 7/28-7/30 Vacation Brennan Price 7/7-7/11 Vacation Howard Robins 7/9 Vacation Perry Williams 7/1-7/22 Vacation Steve Ewald 7/24 Vacation Joel Kleinman 7/25 Vacation

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[ARRL-ODV:9068] ARRL in Action call for material
by Wilson, Mark K1RO 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Dave Hassler asked me to forward his monthly call for ARRL In Action items for QST. 73, Mark K1RO _____ SUBMISSION/LEAD REQUEST FOR 9/03 QST'S "ARRL-IN-ACTION" COLUMN Hi All. I hope this now-familiar note finds you all well. Although, it's now coming to you via the Director's reflector. Several of you rightly pointed out that this might be a better way to go in aiding the effort to cut down spam in our in-boxes. I'm all for that! I am asking for word of anything out there that you personally, or someone in your section, is doing directly for a member, or the membership in general, other than hamfest booth reports (which I will HAPPILY take for the Web version of this column, btw! :^) So, anything that is a direct helping action: you or someone in the section/division helping out at a Big Project pilot school, getting materials to a remote club, or one with special needs, an OO team solving a particularly tough or interesting interference problem, a group going out to visit an elderly ham, etc. Or maybe something else? If it's something the League is doing on behalf of its membership, then it's fair game and I'm all ears! My deadline this month is very tight: July 14 for the September issue. My direct e-mail is k7ccc(a)arrl.org. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you. 73, Dave - K7CCC = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Dave Hassler, K7CCC Assistant News Editor QST Magazine and ARRLWeb . . . . . . American Radio Relay League 225 Main St., Newington, CT 06111 USA Phone: 860-594-0240

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[ARRL-ODV:9067] Re: Minute 56
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Dennis, Jim is referring to the report that was distributed on May 30 as ARRL-ODV:8830. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Dennis Bodson [mailto:bodsond@att.net] Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 1:13 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9066] Re: Minute 56 Jim: Do you mean your report? There is no attachment to this email. Thanks Dennis -----Original Message----- From: W5JBP(a)aol.com [mailto:W5JBP@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 12:45 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9065] Minute 56 I am making a special appeal for you to read the report above. It is comprehensive and represents a lot of work. Jim Haynie, W5JBP

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[ARRL-ODV:9066] Re: Minute 56
by Dennis Bodson 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Jim: Do you mean your report? There is no attachment to this email. Thanks Dennis -----Original Message----- From: W5JBP(a)aol.com [mailto:W5JBP@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 12:45 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9065] Minute 56 I am making a special appeal for you to read the report above. It is comprehensive and represents a lot of work. Jim Haynie, W5JBP

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[ARRL-ODV:9065] Minute 56
by W5JBP＠aol.com 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

I am making a special appeal for you to read the report above. It is comprehensive and represents a lot of work. Jim Haynie, W5JBP

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