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

[arrl-odv:13735] Re: Washington Report
by Bill Edgar 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

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[arrl-odv:13734] Re: Washington Report
by Jim Weaver, K8JE 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Joel, In my opinion, this not only is an excellent report, but represents excellent effort that one hopes will result in excellent conclusions. As to action on our part to support H.Res. 230, I also believe this can be accomplished fairly readily with the mutual cooperation of us Directors. If anyone is interested to hearing more along this line, I'll be happy share thoughts with them. Jim Weaver, K8JE Director, ARRL Great Lakes Division Chairman, ARRL Legislative Action Committee 5065 Bethany Rd., Mason, OH 45040 E-mail: k8je(a)arrl.org; Tel: 513-459-0142 ARRL, the Reason Amateur Radio is! Members, the Reason ARRL is! -----Original Message----- From: Joel Harrison [mailto:w5zn@arrl.org] Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 3:04 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13731] Washington Report Greetings, A report on the meetings in Washington Feb 15 and 16 is attached. This report is not to be distributed to anyone other than ARRL Officers, Directors, and Vice Directors. C U all in the ARRL International DX CW Contest this weekend. 73 Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13733] FW: Please pass on to ODV with attached files
by Kramer, Harold, WJ1B 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Hi, I'm passing this along for Allen. 73, Harold Harold Kramer, WJ1B Chief Operating Officer ARRL - The National Association for Amateur Radio 860 594 0220 -----Original Message----- From: Pitts, Allen W1AGP Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 3:28 PM To: Kramer, Harold, WJ1B Subject: Please pass on to ODV with attached files Hello to all the members of the ARRL ODV list! Get ready for what promises to be one of the most exciting years yet for being a spokesperson for Amateur Radio. It's about to explode in mid-March! The Hello campaign will provide you with the best set of tools ever assembled for promoting ham radio to non-hams. Several parts are already completed and ready to go - and they are stunning! More is being completed almost daily now, and the target date of release is March 15th. I believe you will be more than "pleased" with what's going to be available to hams in promoting Amateur Radio. Great audio, killer video, brochures, websites, bumper stickers, pins, activities and more. The winter 2006 centennial of voice over the airwaves gets us in the media's door and the tools to succeed will be there. But it will indeed take everyone to put into action what we have been wanting for so long. Simply put, no one can sit back and write one or two letters to the local paper for Field Day and stop there. This is far more than one local club or event. I am putting everything I have into this campaign because I believe in the power of ham radio to make friends. Many others have also really gone out of their way to put huge efforts and reputation on the line to bring Hello to life. I hope you will do the same, for without each of you the tools alone cannot work. To make sure that as many PIOs as possible are involved, I am asking the PIC's to be the distributors of the Swiss Army Knife wherever possible. That gives PIC's a reason to contact their PIOs, provide them with the CD of the Swiss Army Knife 06, and make sure that they are "on board" for the Hello campaign and willing to do some work when it comes out. If a section does not have a PIC (which is very unfortunate!) then I am encouraging them get together with other PIOs in ther area. <<Hello Logo.jpg>> Th <<HellloRadio.mp3>> at would help. But <<E-Book Hello Campaign Broch.pdf>> if not, they can just send me a 1:1 email and be sure to include the mailing address. As the days towards March 15 count down, things are going full throttle here to get it all done. Your help in "stirring up the troops" is appreciated. With all of us, working together, it can be a wonderful year for promoting Amateur Radio. NOT FOR RELEASE YET - Attached are three files for your personal use only. Please do NOT release to anyone else yet. Allen Pitts, W1AGP Media and Public Relations Manager ARRL -the national association for Amateur Radio- (860) 594-0328

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[arrl-odv:13732] Re: Washington Report
by John Bellows 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Good team effort!! Thanks to all. Jay -----Original Message----- From: Joel Harrison [mailto:w5zn@arrl.org] Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 2:04 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13731] Washington Report Greetings, A report on the meetings in Washington Feb 15 and 16 is attached. This report is not to be distributed to anyone other than ARRL Officers, Directors, and Vice Directors. C U all in the ARRL International DX CW Contest this weekend. 73 Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13731] Washington Report
by Joel Harrison 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Greetings, A report on the meetings in Washington Feb 15 and 16 is attached. This report is not to be distributed to anyone other than ARRL Officers, Directors, and Vice Directors. C U all in the ARRL International DX CW Contest this weekend. 73 Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13730] FW: Website data
by Kramer, Harold, WJ1B 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Hi, We are trying out some web reporting software. Here are some preliminary findings from Hugh Brower. You may recall that Hugh works for Jon Bloom. Interesting stuff. 73, Harold Harold Kramer, WJ1B Chief Operating Officer ARRL - The National Association for Amateur Radio 860 594 0220 -----Original Message----- From: Hugh Brower [mailto:hbrower@arrl.org] Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 10:49 AM To: Kramer, Harold, WJ1B Cc: Bloom, Jon, KE3Z Subject: Website data With almost 2 weeks worth of data so far it looks like the website is handling an average of 250,000 page views per day, while the number of visitors ranges from 25,000 to 40,000 per day. Most of the hits went to the news stories. F&ES had a lot of hits also, along with the main ARRLWeb page. Also popular were the Catalog area, TIS, W1AW, the Members-only section, and the ARRL Letter area. People finding us from the search engines like Google are using these search terms the most: ARRL, ARES, Ham Radio, Amateur, QST, Randy McCloy, Suitsat, BPL and Ham Radio License. People who came to us from other sites were primarily visiting: Google, Yahoo, Echolink, Hamtest Online, Peterone.com, MSN, QSL.net, AOL, DXZone.com and AC6V.com. 82% of visitors are from the USA, 2.5% from Canada, 2% from the UK, 1% from Japan and under 1% from France, Romania, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Germany. About 9,700 members [this means logged in as members. Members, like me, for example, do not always log in HK] used the website during the period, 30 of them viewed more than 100 pages. 100+ members viewed over 50 pages. Logged-in members only account for about 2% of our daily web traffic. Users from HQ are not included in the above totals. Hugh

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[arrl-odv:13729] Re: Michael Gallagher leaving NTIA
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Further word on Michael Gallagher: he is returning to his former law firm, Perkins Coie LLP as a partner in its Washington office. He will chair its communications and government relations group. He began his legal career at Perkins Coie in 1989 as an associate in the firm's Seattle headquarters. After working on Capitol Hill, he returned to Seattle to develop the firm's government relations practice. It is reported that John Kneuer will serve as acting NTIA administrator. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ [mailto:dsumner@arrl.org] Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 9:59 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13718] Michael Gallagher leaving NTIA One of the Administration's leading apologists for BPL, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Michael D. Gallagher, has announced to his staff that he is leaving the NTIA. However, no one seems to know where he is going. Dave K1ZZ

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[arrl-odv:13728] Re: Marshall Quiat Illness
by Joel Harrison 16 Feb '06

16 Feb '06

I failed to mention that Marshall is also an ARRL Honorary Vice President. Joel -----Original Message----- From: Joel Harrison [mailto:w5zn@arrl.org] Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 9:30 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13726] Marshall Quiat Illness Word comes to us that former Rocky Mountain Director Marshall Quiat, AG0X, is not doing well physically and is in declining health. While there aren't many details nor are there details for a prognosis, the best thing at this point is to just keep Marshall in your thoughts and prayers and maybe drop him a card. 73 Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13726] Marshall Quiat Illness
by Joel Harrison 16 Feb '06

16 Feb '06

Word comes to us that former Rocky Mountain Director Marshall Quiat, AG0X, is not doing well physically and is in declining health. While there aren't many details nor are there details for a prognosis, the best thing at this point is to just keep Marshall in your thoughts and prayers and maybe drop him a card. 73 Joel W5ZN

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[arrl-odv:13727] NTIA 5 MHz Meeting
by Joel Harrison 16 Feb '06

16 Feb '06

Greetings, Yesterday, I mentioned to you that Rinaldo and Imlay attended a meeting at NTIA (National Telecommuncations Information Administration) regarding the amateur allocation at 5 MHz. Please keep the specifics of this information CONFIDENTIAL, as we continue to pursue expansion of the amateur allocation at 5 MHz. Paul & Chris were met by Steve (Stephen) Veader, N4DXS, who is an active HF ham (mentioning that he was looking forward to the upcoming CQWW WPX). He has taken Russ Slye's place at NTIA. He is a good ally, in the same mold as was Russ Slye before Russ retired. There were quite a few people attending the meeting. Some of those best known to Chris were Ross Merlin from FEMA (a longtime acquaintance from Chris' Montgomery Amateur Radio Club days a long time ago now); Jim Hollansworth from NASA, and Merry Jo Gamble (who remembered Chris from his previous meetings at NTIA). Paul knew everyone there; the usual attendees at ITU Geneva meetings and on the U.S. delegation to the WRCs. The following IRAC (Inter-department Radio Advisory Committee) members were in attendance: Defense Justice Homeland Security FEMA Energy NASA Navy Rinaldo presented a power point presentation on amateur usage and future needs at 5 MHz. The response was considerably better than expected. No one had hard questions. This was probably because Paul had decided ahead of time to use the "hat in hand" approach, thanked them for their willingness to let us have some channels at 5 MHz, acknowledged their need to protect their operations and still accommodate our secondary needs there, and to be entirely candid with them. This strategy clearly worked; Paul handed out not only the tabulated data from our 5 MHz survey, but also the raw data. The comments attempted to categorize our goals into short term and longer term goals. The short term goals they agreed to discuss and address among themselves were as follows: 1. The replacement of the channel receiving interference, 5368 kHz; 2. An increase in channel bandwidth to, for example, 3 kHz from 2.8 kHz; 3. A power increase from 50 watts ERP to 100 watts ERP; and 4. Mode expansion, such as data, OFDM and CW. With respect to data, they seemed interested in allowing some form of data, since they too have data needs. Merry Jo Gamble noted that this was being addressed in WP 9C, which Paul was aware. As far as our long term needs, Paul and Chris discussed a desire for a domestic allocation of an unchannelized band, perhaps 50 kHz, secondary to government uses. We were asked what our horizon was on that, and Paul responded that we might ask for an international allocation around 5 MHz, but that would be a subject only introduced at WRC-10. There followed a series of suggestions that we should hurry up and get something on the WRC-10 agenda, but Paul indicated that it would be a placeholder item, to consider an agenda item for an allocation at a future WRC after 2010. Understand that no one has promised us anything. Chris' favorable impression of this meeting is, rather, based on the attitudes of the participants, and the magnitude of what we are attempting here: to gently pry HF spectrum from all agencies at once, which they actively use all the time. That is huge. And if NTIA agrees to improvements, it should be easy for FCC to get the job done. The other impressive thing was the difference between the channel allocation in the first place and this effort to improve the situation. Earlier, the agencies were defensive. This is probably because we went to FCC first, and FCC, without asking NTIA, proposed a 150 kHz band at 5 MHz, which was never achievable. Steve told us that FCC does that all the time, acting as though they don't have any idea what the bands are being used for at all by the agencies. Again, nothing has been promised or given, but this is a very big step in the right direction for expanding the amateur allocation at 5 MHz and was a result of Paul's presentation and Paul & Chris' scheduling the meeting with NTIA before talking to FCC, and the fact that we presented them the raw survey data that showed them we have nothing to hide in our effort. It also helped that Ross Merlin and Steve Veader are active hams and gave us "feeder questions" that they knew the answers to! 73 Joel W5ZN

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