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Vol. 30, No. 19
May 9, 2007 -- Covers the period April 29-May 5.
Upcoming Meetings and Events
IARU Administrative Council Meeting
May 14-15 in Boston, MA
IARU Administrative Council Visit
May 16 in Newington, CT
Dayton Hamvention
May 18-20 in Dayton, OH
Administration & Finance Committee
July 19 in Newington, CT
Second Board Meeting
July 20-21, 2007 in Windsor, CT
Regulatory Information
Reported by Dan Henderson, N1ND
Questions on Pave Paws continue to be handled. We hope to be able to do
a follow-up story on the web the week of May 7th. We also received
reports from more repeater owners that they were in the process of
voluntarily reducing their power levels to 5 W TPO as a first step.
Time was spent during the week on PowerPoint presentations for several
upcoming conventions. We also met with Katie Breen and Maria Somma on
preparing our forum for Dayton Hamvention. Dan was out of the office
late in the week to attend the SC Section convention. He also spoke at
a monthly meeting of the Western Carolina Amateur Radio Society in
Asheville, NC while on the trip.
Production/Editorial
Reported by Joel Kleinman, N1BKE
Rick Lindquist reports The ARRL Letter, Vol. 26, No. 18, distributed to
66,198 members on May 4. Rick prepared/edited news stories on the
now-ended Scarborough Reef DXpedition, the FCC's "smart radio" order,
four Amateur Radio on the International Space Station school group
contacts, FCC enforcement and several news briefs and announcements. He
also began work on his final "Happenings" column, for July QST. Rick
voiced, edited and produced ARRL Audio News for May 4.
Business Services
Reported by Deb Jahnke, K1DAJ
Despite all solicitation efforts, we are facing a challenging time with
advertising for the July 2007 issue of QST. After many years holding an
up-front position in the magazine, Kenwood has tentatively decided to
relinquish that spot. Deb Jahnke will meet with the head of Kenwood's
Amateur Division in Ohio. In addition, several other advertisers have
temporarily decided to cut back on this particular issue. The single
reason cited, is that they cannot keep up with the number of orders they
have received (as improbable as that sounds for a reason). On the
opposite side of the equation are several advertisers who must catch up
on past invoices before continuing to advertise. A number of meetings at
Dayton with potential advertisers are planned.
Wholesale book sales with Ingram Publishing have been sluggish for the
past several years. We have established new guidelines with Ingram to
allow an additional percent discount if specific quantity levels are
met. We have already received their first order after this negotiation
and it is substantially larger than in the recent past. We obviously
hope to reinvigorate our business relationship and this is a good first
step.
Membership & Volunteer Programs
Reported by Dave Patton, NN1N
Contest Branch
Work continues to prepare the results columns for the 2006 10-Meter,
2006 RTTY Roundup and 2007 January VHF Contests.
The Sweepstakes cups arrived back at headquarters on Thursday afternoon;
this time in their mailers. Carol Michaud spent all day Friday
completing the orders for mailing.
QSL Branch
There is no delay in opening mail and a 5 day delay in slotting of
cards. This week, 132 pounds of cards were received from members.
W1AW
Thanks to the Candlewood ARA for their operating W1AW in the 2007 New
England QSO Party. They made 80 QSOs, with 35 multipliers on 40 and 20
meters, for an initial claimed score of 2,800.
Scott worked on fast and slow code practice files for the first half of
the month of May. He also assisted the DXCC department with checking
110 (database-inputted) cards against DXCC applications. Scott also
hosted the Candlewood ARA members.
Joe spent two days training Tom Hogerty on how to run the morning code
practices at W1AW and setting up for visitors operations. Joe, with
help from Greg (and some assistance from Mike Tracy) got the legs of the
North tower 80-meter dipole up in the trees. This antenna is cut for
the lower portion of 80-meters, but will work (with a tuner) in the
upper part of 80. It's now available for visitor use (or bulletin use
if necessary). Joe completed some work on the 160-meter dipole as well.
He also isolated the cooling fans (used on the Icom broadcast
transmitters) from the radios. Pulling power from the radios to operate
the cooling fans introduced some "fan noise" in the transmitted signals.
Power to these fans now comes direct from the 12 VDC power supplies.
Field Organization/Public Service Team
The New Hampshire Section Manager election continues during the first
half of May, and ballots are due at Headquarters by Friday, May 18.
Ballots will be counted on May 22. Leona Adams prepared the SM
nomination solicitation for July QST. She entered 38 new Field
Organization appointments and sent out information supply packages.
Chuck Skolaut compiled and forwarded the monthly ARRL Monitoring
System/Intruder Watch report to the IARU Region 2 coordinator.
Interference reported in Nebraska to a 2 meter repeater was found to be
originating from a VHF base station used for train dispatching which had
a spur on the 2 meter band. After being informed, the railroad
technician was able to resolve the problem. Several other repeater
interference problems continue to be monitored by Official Observers.
Operators continue to report the music jammer on 18.160 MHz including
one from a Norway who said he checked on it after reading about it on
the ARRL Web's News page.
The Section Emergency Coordinator's Yahoo! Discussion group has been
active with discussions about the status of RACES and how well RACES has
been relating or working with ARES in their specific states and
sections. Steve Ewald has been working on July QST's Public Service
column.
Web/Software Development
Reported by Jon Bloom, KE3Z
April Web stats:
8.3 million page views, 278,000 per day
408,000 unique visitors
Top pages: News, F & ES, Contests, TIS, W1AW, Members-Only page, FCC,
VEC, Catalog
Most popular searches:
From outside: ARRL, ARES, Ham Radio, QST, LOTW, Morse Code,
AARL, DXCC
From our site: Band Plan, DXCC, Field Day, ARES, LOTW, Antenna,
Nets, APRS
Hugh Brower has been working on an ExamWin distribution that includes
the new General pool. Both English and Spanish (by ex-SM Victor Madera,
KP4PQ) versions are in the works.
The new LoTW server is ready for use. Jon Bloom just needs to schedule
a period of about 36 hours of LoTW downtime to migrate the current
database to the new server.
Jon modified our bulk e-mail sending system to allow capture of bounce
messages for a project of Debra Johnson's Education Services department.
He also completed arrangements with FedEx to use their Ship Manager
Direct on-line service to get shipping quotes, moving from the FedEx
test system to their "live" system.
Micah Murray continues to be the principal maintainer of Web site page
material and is also working on the final issues for the new membership
application system.
Sincerely Compiled by,
Lisa Kustosik, KA1UFZ
Assistant to the CEO
Staff Absentee List
All Staff 5/28 Holiday
Kathy Allison 5/24-5/29 Vacation
Margie Bourgoin 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
`` 6/1-6/5 Vacation
Steve Capodicasa 5/7-5/11 Vacation
Joe Carcia 5/25 Vacation
`` 6/28-7/6 Vacation
`` 7/13 Vacation
`` 7/20 Vacation
`` 7/27 Vacation
Steve Ford 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
`` 5/21-5/23 Vacation
`` 6/13-6/15 SNAP Publishing Conference,
Washington, DC
Scott Gee 5/17-5/18 Vacation
Mike Gruber 6/4-6/8 Vacation
Joel Hallas 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
Ed Hare 5/16-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
`` 5/21-5/22 National Spectrum Managers
Association, Arlington, VA
`` 7/8-7/13 EMC Society Symposium
Committee Meeting, Honolulu, HI
Dan Henderson 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
`` 6/1-6/3 Georgia State
Convention, Marietta, GA
`` 8/16-8/28 ARRL National
Convention, Huntsville, AL/Vacation
Mary Hobart 5/16-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
`` 6/1-6/4 Northwestern Division
Convention, Seaside, OR
Khrystyne Keane 5/17-5/18 Vacation
Joel Kleinman 5/10 Vacation
`` 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
Zak Lau 6/21-6/22 Vacation
Rick Lindquist 5/18-5/20 Delaware Section Convention,
Georgetown, DE
`` 5/21 Vacation
Bill Moore 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention
`` 6/8-6/10 West Gulf
Convention, Plano, TX
Dave Patton 5/17-5/21 Dayton Hamvention
`` 6/19-6/25 Friedrichshafen Germany
Convention
Chuck Skolaut 5/14-5/21 Vacation
Dean Straw 5/16-5/20 Contest University/Dayton
Hamvention
Dave Sumner 5/14-5/15 IARU Administrative Council
Meeting, Boston, MA
`` 5/17-5/18 Dayton Hamvention
`` 5/21 Vacation
`` 6/10-6/25 ITU-R WP8A Geneva, and
Friedrichshafen Germany
Mike Tracy 5/23-5/30 Vacation
Larry Wolfgang 5/24-5/25 Vacation
`` 5/31-6/1 Vacation
