Brian, If you are receiving E-mail from members of your Division, only, feel lucky! At least being a surrogate dart board makes me feel useful! Jim Weaver, K8JE Director, Great Lakes Division ARRL 5065 Bethany Rd., Mason, OH 45040 Tel. 513-459-0142, E-mail k8je@arrl.org ARRL: The reason Amateur Radio is! Members: The reason ARRL is! -----Original Message----- From: Brian Mileshosky [mailto:n5zgt@swcp.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 10:08 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:12189] Bandplan Proposal & Marketing Hi Everyone, Like you, I've been receiving emails from members in my Division, expressing pleasure or displeasure with the bandwidth proposal. They've spurred a concern that I shared with my Director, Rev, today and I'd like to share it with you. All of my emails are either to the tune of "I oppose because Winlink this..." or "I support because I think Winlink..." Winlink is the common thread in every one of them. There's no other reasoning behind these people's support or opposition. Incidentally, go to eHam.net or QRZ.com and you see pretty much the same thing there. All seemingly Winlink driven. Perhaps I've not been in this particular League circle long enough, but people seem to be thinking that Winlink is pretty cozy with us and this proposal. Is this really the case? If so, or if not -- is this the impression we want motivating people's support/opposition of the bandwidth proposal? At the risk of sounding cavalier, I think the League needs to do a MUCH, MUCH better PR job with respect to educating members (and non-members) about this proposal, its background, and our motivation. I see more on the ARRL website and QST about what we are doing, and not so much about WHY. We know why, but what level of knowledge does the membership that we serve have? Dave's recent "It Seems to Us" column is an excellent piece, but it won't be read by anyone until it hits the newsstands, whenever that is. In the meantime, people are drawing their own conclusions and that's certainly not buying us any friends, doing us any favors, or lending us any support. My suggestion is this: explain the proposal, from A to Z, in laymen terms, perhaps through an informative FAQ that both educated and dispells rumors. Post it in a most obvious place on the ARRL website. What spurred this proposal? What does it really fix? What if we don't act? What good does it bring to Ham Radio? What about these Winlink charges? Is this really crafted for the digital guys? Why only HF? And so on. Additionally, perhaps the same FAQ can be emailed to all the members who have an "arrl.net" address. Let's get the word out and market this, even if it's merely a proposal. Otherwise, I fear, things like Winlink is going to continue being a major driving force, and rumors, as well as the fringe on eHam.net and qrz.com are going to do our educating for us. Comments? Ideas? Respectfully submitted, Brian, N5ZGT