November 2014 - arrl-odv - reflector.arrl.org

[arrl-odv:23495] Election results
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

Congratulations to International Affairs Vice President Jay Bellows, K0QB, who yesterday won a seat on the West St. Paul City Council in a close race. Dave K1ZZ

2 1

[arrl-odv:23494] FCC Paper License Docket 14-161; as-filed comments
by Christopher Imlay 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

Greetings. Pursuant to the approval of the Executive Committee, I have just filed comments for ARRL in FCC Docket 14-161, which will directly affect the Amateur Service as an administrative matter. FCC issued in October a Public Notice proposing to cease *routinely* issuing paper licenses to licensees in all the wireless services, including the Amateur Service. Now, of course, when you obtain a new license, a renewal or a modified license, FCC will issue you a new paper version on some distinctive paper stock.This is true even though, for years, FCC rules have made clear that the real Amateur Radio Service license is not the piece of paper but rather the license grant information in the database. They want to stop issuing the paper themselves as SOP. FCC is willing to continue to mail paper licenses to those who request them. However, they are making available to licensees (starting right now) the actual license to print via the FCC ULS system and they are allowing hams now to opt out of receiving paper licenses from FCC directly. To access one's own license from the ULS, a ham will need to use his or her FRN number and password. Alternative means of obtaining this data from FCC will be via e-mail or US mail. This is not the end of the world, but it does create some practical difficulties. These comments address those difficulties. I received in preparing these comments a very comprehensive and thoughtful memo on the subject from President Craigie and an extremely helpful telephone tutorial from Maria Somma on the subject. These comments incorporate their good arguments. I also received helpful followup edits from Kay, Jay Bellows, Dave Sumner, Maria and Dan Henderson. Thanks to the Executive Committee members who reviewed these comments quickly and approved the filing. Though the comment date is November 10 I filed these comments today because I will be out of pocket from November 6 through 15. There is no reply comment date but we will monitor this proceeding as it goes along. 73, Chris W3KD -- Christopher D. Imlay Booth, Freret & Imlay, LLC 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD(a)ARRL.ORG

1 0

[arrl-odv:23493] Web Site Maintenance
by Shelley, Barry, N1VXY 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

Ladies and Gentlemen: The following story is going to be posted to the ARRL web site: ARRL Website Will Be Unavailable on November 7 Starting at 2100 UTC The ARRL website is scheduled to be offline on Friday, November 7, starting at 2100 UTC. The length of the outage could run for several hours and possibly into Saturday, November 8. The ARRL IT Department will be performing maintenance and testing in the process of switching the site to a new server. A "Down for Maintenance" message will appear for the duration of the outage whenever someone attempts to access www.arrl.org<http://www.arrl.org>. All e-mail functionality will remain online - only the website will be down for testing. We expect this to be the final step in the installation of new, more robust hardware to support the web site at Rackspace. Included in the downtime will be the web site, On-line DXCC and the E-store. 73, Barry J. Shelley, N1VXY Chief Financial Officer ARRL, Inc. The National Association for Amateur Radio (860) 594-0212 www.arrl.org

1 0

[arrl-odv:23492] Board Confidential: Laura Smith taking a new job
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

Board Confidential: While it has not yet been formally announced, we have learned that Laura Smith will be taking the Regional Counsel position for the FCC Enforcement Bureau's Northeast Region. She will still be reporting to Regional Director Mike Moffitt. What this means for the Amateur Radio enforcement program in the short term is not yet clear. Laura will still have some involvement but it will not be her principal duty. Our preference is for there to be an FCC staff member whose primary function is Amateur Radio enforcement, but we don't yet know whether there will be a replacement for Laura or we will be looking to the field offices to take the initiative in their respective areas. 73, Dave K1ZZ

1 0