February 2006 - arrl-odv - reflector.arrl.org

[arrl-odv:13818] FW: Plan Update
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

President Harrison has asked me to forward this report to you. In the future we will forward them regularly. I have been sending draft emails for directors to send to members in specific Congressional districts that are on the future visitation list. So far the response from members is modest but positive. 73, Dave Sumner, K1ZZ First 90-day plan update: Feb 13-24 We had the 90-day briefing just last week with everyone here in DC, followed by some early meetings. This past week has delivered three more House meetings and our first two Senate meetings. There were visitations for offices not on our targeted list, as well, yet still had letters from their district. Below are summaries from the House meetings. * Rep. Bilirakis' (FL-9) office was knowledgeable of ARRL and the BPL situation and is interested in learning more. A side note is that Rep. Bilirakis is retiring come November. * Joel and I visited Rep. Mike Ross' (AR-4) office and had a very good meeting. This included the affirmation of ARRL's efforts on the Hill and personally delivering letters to the Congressman's hands to emphasize this fact (a feat not often achieved) . * Rep. Gillmor's (OH-5) office expressed interest and will get back to us. * Rep. Upton's (MI-6) office said they would study the issue in depth and asked for more materials, as I mentioned the "Communications Daily" article. * Rep. Ed Markey's (MA-7) office staff member was not aware of ARRL and it was an informative meeting. We intend to return, perhaps to meet with a senior staff member. * Rep. Whitfield's (KY-1) staffer knew a lot about Amateur Radio and Spectrum so we had a talk and left all of our information. We will continue to concentrate on the 88 office plan and already have meetings scheduled with 2nd round House members. Letters are still coming in for first week visitations, but we are a bit short on 2nd week letters. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our office. Eric Heis Legislative Assistant Chwat & Company, Inc. 625 Slaters Lane, Suite 103 Alexandria, VA 22314 (P) 703.684.7703 (M)703.946.5532 (F) 703.684.7594

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Re: 35 Letters Ain't Yet 35 !!!!
by dick＠pobox.com 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

28 FEB 2006 - 1440 CST I thought I was close to the last member of the board family to send an HR-230 letter to my U.S. Representative. Apparently, this is not the case. It's easy to do when the letter template has been provided for you. I took the "stock" letter and personalized it. I have attached my letter to this message as an example of how easy it is to change it. It's now in the process of being circulated to many of the Central Division members with a request that they write their respective representatives. Let's all get with the program. If we can get this resolution out of the barn and get it adopted during this session of Congress, the ARRL will begin to have more political standing with our federal representatives and with the FCC. And it will be easier to do the next time around. 73 - Dick, W9GIG

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35 Letters Ain't Yet 35 !!!!
by Joel Harrison 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

Dave will be providing a summary of congressional visits to you soon so you will be aware of our on-going D.C. legwork. I need to again re-emphasize the importance of sending your own congressional representative a letter regarding H.Res 230. Thank you very much to those that have sent your letter. It is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, we have NOT reached our mark of 35 letters. Dave did all the leg work and prepared the letter for each of you and emailed it to you. All that is required on your part is the very brief moment it takes to print it out, sign it, put it in an addressed envelope and mail it. So I really don't understand why everyone hasn't done this. If there is a valid reason, please let me know. If you lost the email or did not receive the email that contained your letter, give us a yell, we'll send you a replacement. This is very important. The board unanimously said our 2006 Legislative Agenda is important and a very high priority for ARRL and amateur radio, and BPL that is specifically addressed in H.Res. 230 is urgently important. Yet we're deficient in getting 100% of our own small group of 35 directors, vice directors and officers to put forth the effort to mail a simple letter that was already prepared for you. If we're not willing to participate 100% in this effort, how can we can expect our members to follow our lead? We also can't expect to hold the staff or Chwat accountable for this effort because if we can't get 100% behind a simple task like this, how can we expect them to think of our legislative effort is important task when we just talk and don't walk? They are asking for your help. I am asking for your help. Your Grassroots Committee is asking for your help. PLEASE. So, if you are one of the few that has not yet sent your letter to your congressional representative regarding H.Res. 230...PLEASE, please do so immediately, and make sure you send Dave and/or Chwat a copy. It is important that we report to the Executive Committee on March 11 that we have reached 100% in our 35 letter campaign. Tnx es 73, Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13815] ARRL National Emergency Response Planning Committee
by Joel Harrison 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

Greetings, I'm pleased to appoint the following radio amateurs to serve on the ARRL National Emergency Response Planning Committee created at Minute 51 of the 2006 Annual Meeting: Kay Craigie, N3KN, Chair - ARRL First Vice President Andy Oppel, N6AJO, Pacific Division Vice Director Tom Abernethy, W3TOM, Atlantic Division Vice Director Greg Sarratt, W4OZK, Alabama Section Manager Ed Bruette, N7NVP Western Washington Section Manager Jerry Reimer, KK5CA, South Texas Section Emergency Coordinator Jeff Beals, WA4AW, South Florida Section Emergency Coordinator Tom Carrubba, KA2D, NYC-Long Island Section Emergency Coordinator Karl Bullock, WA5TMC , District Emergency Coordinator Mississippi Section Gene McGahey, AL7GQ, Net Manager/State Government Liaison-Colorado Section Rick Palm, K1CE, IARU Region II Emergency Coordinator-IARU Liaison Dave Patton, NN1N, ARRL F&ES Manager-Staff Liaison Henry Leggette, WD4Q, Delta Division Director-PSC Liaison The committee will begin its work immediately under the direction of First Vice President Craigie. There were a large number of excellent recommendations for this committee which is quite encouraging in itself and speaks highly of Amateur Radio's productive involvement in emergency communications. The above group reflects a nationwide assembly of individuals with direct field experience in all aspects of emergency communications at various levels with disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, floods and terroristic activity to name a few. 73 Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13814] Committee Reporting
by Joel Harrison 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

Over the past several years we seem to have become complacent with waiting until a board meeting to distribute information about our committee work. This includes not only our standing committees, but our ad-hoc committees as well. Used to be, that wasn't the case. When a committee had a meeting or a telecon an agenda was distributed to everyone, minutes were completed within a week or two and then distributed to the entire board. That seems to have stopped in all but a case or two. We have to be better than that....we must be better than that. We all know that it is absolutely impossible to absorb everything we have going on and to get up to speed with everything we are supposed to be knowledgeable on while attending a meeting our cramming just a few days before a meeting like a final exam. You have my personal commitment that I will keep you informed as to what I have going on. I asked that I have that same commitment from each of you in your committee work. If you are a committee chair or secretary then you are responsible for getting your meeting/telecon information out to the board so we all know what we each have working. We should not circumvent our committee process by trying to get signed up on every committee reflector we have or get involved in the committee's work. If you're not assigned to a particular committee you should not interfere with its work, but you can certainly should stay informed as to what is happening and the committee has a responsibility to keep you informed, as it is the board that has the final decision authority and as a director will have a final say in a committee' output. There is no need for "secrets" within our group. There is obviously, from time to time, matters that arise or that we are discussing that requires confidentiality....to not be distributed or discussed outside the board. I expect everyone to understand and abide by whatever specific instructions are given in each case. But that does NOT exclude any member of the board from access to such....just remember you may be bound by confidentiality within the board. That's not just my position, but everyone one of your colleagues sitting around the table that expects adherence to this. If you are uncertain about a particular topic, then simply ask. So, please, join me in stepping up our dissemination of information from within our "sub-groups" to the board so we can stay better informed as to what each committee is doing. What I expect to see is a routine discussion at the board level about various things we are working throughout the year and not the flood of discussion that breaks out just a few days before our board meetings because reports are just being distributed. This will free up valuable time at board meetings to focus on things vitally important to our organization and amateur radio. Thanks es 73, Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13813] Web Usage Report
by Kramer, Harold, WJ1B 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

Here is Hugh Brower's latest report on our web site: The latest batch of website data covers the last 22 days. The website usage ranges from 25,000 - 40,000 visitors per day. The number of page views ranges from just under 200,000 to 290,000 views per day. Hits range from just under 1 million to a high of 1.4 million per day. Ranked by page views, the most visited areas of the site were: News, F&ES, Contests, W1AW, TIS, Members Only, Catalog, FCC, Arrl Letter, VEC, Radios Online, LOTW and Awards. Sub-sections that were especially popular included the FCC Lookup, Soapbox areas, Club lookup, the Web surveys, our search engine, Hamfests, Hamradio.html (Becoming a Ham), the RSS feeds and the License Exam search. About 2 of every 100 hits on the site is for the main ARRLWeb page. Around 20 - 25% of page views are attributable to search engine robots. The top 10 countries by hits, were the USA 82%, Canada, Japan, and the UK between 1.5% and 2%, and under 1%: Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands. 74% of visitors used Internet Explorer, 14% used Firefox, 4% used Netscape, and under 2% were Safari, Mozilla Suite, Opera and AOL browsers. About 94% of visitors were Windows users, Mac users about 2%, and Linux about 1.5%. Visitors who got to our site from other sites mainly came from: Google. Yahoo, Echolink, HamTestOnline, MSN, Peterone.com, AC6V.com, QSL.net, DXZone.com, various Google overseas sites, Fortunecity.com, and AA9PW.com. Search phrases they used to find our site included: ARRL ARES Ham Radio QST Amateur Radio BPL Randy McCloy Morse Code LOTW Hamfest Suitsat DXCC Tornadoes Software Defined Radio Antenna Theory AARL W1AW QEX GPS Antenna ---------------------- Harold Kramer, WJ1B Chief Operating Officer ARRL - The National Association for Amateur Radio 225 Main Street Newington, CT 06111 860 594 0220 www.arrl.org/

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[arrl-odv:13812] Motorola White Paper on Powerline LV
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

Motorola has just begun distributing the attached paper describing the Powerline LV BPL system and the results of the tests conducted at W1AW. This makes the point we have been hitting over and over: we're not against BPL, we're against BPL interference. Dave K1ZZ

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[arrl-odv:13811] Re: Stationery - wow!
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Thanks, Henry. I have a color printout of the electronic version of the letterhead on my desk. It's quite stunning -- I wish we could afford to print it that way! 73, Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Henry R. Leggette [mailto:wd4q@bellsouth.net] Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 11:27 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13810] Re: Stationery - wow! Hi Dave, I thinks staff did an excellent job on the newly designed stationary. The one on page 4 and 9 of the current QST is great. I mostly like the fading of the ARRL Diamond and this makes it better in my opinion for the electronic stationary. Very good job! 73, Henry - WD4Q ----- Original Message ----- From: Sumner, Dave, <mailto:dsumner@arrl.org> K1ZZ To: arrl-odv <mailto:arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 7:42 AM Subject: [arrl-odv:13809] Re: Stationery - wow! There is if you adjust the left margin. If you set the left margin at 0.5" you get the standard 6" "canvas" on which to paint your prose. So far I prefer a left margin of 0.8" and a 5.5" "canvas" which doesn't crowd the blue strip. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: W3KD(a)aol.com [mailto:W3KD@aol.com] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2006 9:57 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13801] Re: Stationery - wow! There isn't much room on the letterhead for actual information though. Bad deal for verbose people... yes, I realize I am leading with my chin here. 73, Chris W3KD

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[arrl-odv:13810] Re: Stationery - wow!
by Henry R. Leggette 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Hi Dave, I thinks staff did an excellent job on the newly designed stationary. The one on page 4 and 9 of the current QST is great. I mostly like the fading of the ARRL Diamond and this makes it better in my opinion for the electronic stationary. Very good job! 73, Henry - WD4Q ----- Original Message ----- From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ To: arrl-odv Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 7:42 AM Subject: [arrl-odv:13809] Re: Stationery - wow! There is if you adjust the left margin. If you set the left margin at 0.5" you get the standard 6" "canvas" on which to paint your prose. So far I prefer a left margin of 0.8" and a 5.5" "canvas" which doesn't crowd the blue strip. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: W3KD(a)aol.com [mailto:W3KD@aol.com] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2006 9:57 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13801] Re: Stationery - wow! There isn't much room on the letterhead for actual information though. Bad deal for verbose people... yes, I realize I am leading with my chin here. 73, Chris W3KD

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[arrl-odv:13809] Re: Stationery - wow!
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

There is if you adjust the left margin. If you set the left margin at 0.5" you get the standard 6" "canvas" on which to paint your prose. So far I prefer a left margin of 0.8" and a 5.5" "canvas" which doesn't crowd the blue strip. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: W3KD(a)aol.com [mailto:W3KD@aol.com] Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2006 9:57 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13801] Re: Stationery - wow! There isn't much room on the letterhead for actual information though. Bad deal for verbose people... yes, I realize I am leading with my chin here. 73, Chris W3KD

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