IN-Newsletter Vol. 26, No. 48 December 3, 2003 Upcoming Meetings December 6th in Newington, CT at 8:30am A&F Committee Media Relations Jennifer and John Hennessee talked with a reporter from the Detroit Free Press who is working on a story about zoning laws. John filled her in on ham radio zoning issues, and Jennifer provided some general information on the enjoyment and public service value of Amateur Radio today. The article is set to appear on December 11, in the following community news section: http://www.freep.com/index/community.htm. Based on information provided by PR Committee Chairman Jeff Reinhardt, AA6JR, Jennifer drafted a memo to the A&F, requesting additional funds for 2004 PRC activities. A double October/November issue of the Contact! newsletter was completed and posted to the PR pages. The annual article announcing the call for McGan Award nominations was submitted for the February issue of QST. Jen sent Dave Sumner's bio and photo to organizers working on the Northwest Division Convention publicity materials. Three more nominations were requested for the 2003 Bill Leonard, W2SKE, Professional Media Award. The deadline for nominations is December 5, and the final decision will be announced after the January Board meeting. Production/Editorial We checked printer's proofs of the new printing of Digital Signal Processing Technology. The January/February issue of QEX has been released to the printer. Production work on the January/February issue of NCJ is wrapping up. Dave Hassler completed the text of an upcoming QST article relating to the Field Organization. He also worked with Wayne Mills and Dave Patton to complete a Logbook of the World update for the ARRLWeb, and he edited a number of other Web features. Rick Lindquist reports that 66,860 members received The ARRL Letter, Vol 22, No 47 (Nov 28, 2003) via e-mail, up by about 80 from the previous week. Rick prepared/edited stories for the Web and/or Letter on the ARRL Executive Committee meeting earlier this month, FCC Wireless Bureau reorganization, the Roy Neal/ARISS special event, an ARISS school group contact with a school in Australia, an Amateur Radio revocation proceeding based on "character qualifications" and the announcement of the 2004 Amateur Radio Direction Finding USA Championships. He also edited the Web youth column by Andrea Hartlage, KG4IUM. With voiceover assistance from Jennifer Hagy, N1TDY, Rick voiced, produced and edited ARRL Audio News for Nov 28 (The Letter and AAN distributed Nov 26 because of the holiday). Congratulations to Joel Hallas, who has been presented with his 40 year ARRL membership certificate and pin. Joel has turned in one of the reviews for the February "Product Review" column. E-mail responses to his Emergency Power article in December QST continue to arrive at a rate of about two per day. Some include interesting comments and suggestions, some have questions about specific applications and others provide information on other approaches taken over the years. Sales & Marketing In the Holiday shortened 3 day week we still shipped over 1000 Packages out the door including QST supplements totaling over 2,000 issues of December QST. Bob Inderbitzen produced four email solicitations, successfully boosting sales placed on the ARRLWeb e-store throughout the Thanksgiving holiday. The campaign featured a handful of new products, items with special pricing, and free shipping incentives. Online sales during the 10-day campaign, which included the 4-day Thanksgiving holiday, yielded gross sales of $62,867.48 in 1,419 orders (excluding tax, shipping & handling). The same period in 2002 produced sales of $34,722.57 in 740 orders. The email solicitations are received by over 46,000 ARRL members (compared with 43,000 in 2002). As previously reported, test mailings are being prepared to help improve the renewal rate of the third renewal notice to members about to lapse. Dave Hassler, K7CCC, drafted the new letters. Final changes and formatting were completed this week, and the materials were turned over to the printer. Mailing is planned within the week. We're eagerly tracking the results from the recent ICOM/ARRL membership recruitment initiative. The first 4 membership applications have been received online. These new members keyed-in unique codes imprinted on $15 ARRL membership vouchers affixed to the cartons of new ICOM radios. ARRL will accept the vouchers through February 29. More information is available at www.arrl.org/max and December QST, page 114. Over 250 "L/C/F and Coil Winding Calculators" have been sold since they were added to our product offerings in November. We're delighted with the initial response to this gadget. Janet Rocco reported that nearly 10% of the "order evaluation cards" sent to customers have been received back. Customers were asked to rate ARRL on a handful of categories including timeliness of delivery, shipment accuracy, and product quality. The majority of responses were good or excellent. A few comments were included, too: "It's so easy to order HAM literature, very comfortable great service, thanks."--international customer. "A simple order filled without problems. Isn't that what every transaction should be like?" "Please thank everyone at ARRL HQ for being there when we need them. I wish all of the American businesses were as good to deal with as the ARRL." Membership Services Awards Branch 25-Year Certs. Processed 17 40-Year Certs. Processed 12 LTMA Inquiries 2 A-1 Op. Noms. 3 LTMA Awards Mailed 69 Other Awards Mailed 9 VUCC Ends. 2 Grids 77 Processing Status: Current or up to four weeks. For the coming week-WAS QSL card checking, WAS Specialty, OTC, and VUCC awards, package and mail all the VUCC and foreign WAC awards. Contest Branch The 2003 August UHF Online results were finalized and opened to the membership. Data entry for November Sweepstakes continued. We have begun looking at ways to update the Contest address database. Since a large number of certificates are mailed out of country to non-members (such as for the DX Contest), we cannot simply rely on the FCC of ARRL member databases for addresses. The 2003 IARU HF checked scores were received from the log checker and reviewed. After reviewing for zone problems, the log checkers were asked to address a couple of questions that arose. This was done and the revised scores were returned, formatted and merged into the master database. Box scores for the event were prepared and sent to the author, as well as a copy of the database for his use. We continue to label and mail DX Contest certificates. DXCC Branch For the week of: November 30, 2003 Beginning Cards 144,151 Cards Received 6,162 Cards Processed 11,980 Ending Cards 138,333 Applications Pending 1,158 Processing Time 9.4 Weeks Year-to-date (2003) Cards Received 593,521 Cards Returned 668,632 DXCC is currently mailing applications received on September 25, 2003. DXCC is currently entering cards received on September 30, 2003. We are our yearly stall point in regard to the DXCC backlog. September 30, as is normal, was the heaviest mail log date of the year. We are currently about 25% into the data entry for this date and much more is needed to get through the 30th, but staff is making reasonably good progress. We expect that we should be finished with all mail out the door that was logged in on Sep 30, by the second week of January 2004. Data entry should be finished on or by December 24, excluding any problems or staff shortages. After that the backlog will shrink quickly. QSL Bureau QSL Service Status: Current. Cards mailed as of 11/30/03: 1,273,775. Cards mailed on 11/26/03: 53,550. W1AW Thanks to Dan Henderson, N1ND for operating W1AW in the CQ World Wide DX CW Contest. He made 299 QSOs, with 77 Zones and 187 DX countries, on 6 bands (160 to 10 meters) for a claimed score of 205,656. Joe repaired the three M2 Rotator control consoles. He also processed regular W1AW QSL card requests. Scott worked on fast and slow code practice files for the month of December. He also handled some evening phone sales calls in the 5 PM to 8 PM time slot. W1AW Telephone Sales year to date (2003): $32,498. Field & Educational Services Rosalie completed a questionnaire at APCO's request about their annual conference that she presented at last summer. Amateur Radio Education & Technology Program Mark Spencer reported a significant happening during this short week, courtesy of Jay Chamberlain, AE4MK, who is active with schools and an FBI employee. The FBI had a number of surplus 2 meter hand held radios that they never used. They wanted to give them out to schools. A message went out to the Project schools that detailed the procedures for obtaining the HTs for their students. To start, each applying school will receive 2 HTs. Mark also completed a prototype experiment/activity that demonstrates one of electronics' fundamental principals. The details will go out to schools over reflector/e-mail with the activity included in the curriculum. Field & Education Support Team Jean Wolfgang is working on rewriting some of the Educational award letters since the process (for some of the awards) will be changing. She also responded to ISS questions and has reviewed a few additional youth web sites. Tom Cote processed 8 club email forwarding address changes. Requests from clubs seeking email routing changes have increased in response to spam vexation. Tom also assisted a member looking to donate equipment to a club, and filed club newsletters received over the past month. Gail Iannone sent 9 hamfest approval letters to the sponsoring committees confirming the Division Director's approval of the events to be "ARRL-sanctioned" and processed 1 label request for an upcoming event. Linda Mullally updated 37 clubs with 2 reactivations. She registered 4 Instructors and mailed out 10 initial supply packages for new appointments. Linda also assisted with certificates mailing for the CCE program. Mary Lau sent an e-ballot out for vote for the Foundation and worked with Tom Cote to bring him up to speed on club database and Siebel navigation. Mary processed one club affiliation, and forwarded same for Director review. Field Organization/Public Service Team Leona Adams and Steve Ewald are in touch with the newly-elected and first time Section Managers of Tennessee (Larry Marshall, WB4NCW) and Alabama (Greg Sarrett, W4OZK) as they prepare to take office in January. Leona received SM nomination petitions from incumbents Mickey Cox, K5MC (Louisiana) and John Covington, W4CC (North Carolina) for terms beginning April, 2004. Steve reports that SMs have been helping to promote the ARRL/National Weather Service SKYWARN Recognition Day through their ARRL-sponsored electronic communication tools. This event is all day on Saturday, December 6 (0000-2400 UTC). National Weather Service's event coordinator Scott Mentzer, N0QE, reports that are currently 108 NWS stations slated to participate. Regulatory Information John Hennessee heard from Jeff Albrecht, N8WR who announced that the City of Troy, Michigan changed their restrictive 25 foot local government zoning ordinance to 75 feet for Amateur Radio operators which is good news for area amateurs. John assisted an amateur in Penn Township, PA (WA2CRK) with a local government zoning problem. He had a very informative discussion with Daniel Wolff of the US Army MARS Radio Licensing Management Office concerning US military amateur operation in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world. John is also updating the information on the ARRL Web page for amateurs who are eligible to operate under the Status of Forces Agreement. 73, Sincerely, Mark Wilson, K1RO Chief Operations Officer MW:lk Staff Absentee List All Staff 12/25-12/26 Holiday All Staff 1/1 Holiday Mark Wilson 12/24-1/2 Vacation Jennifer Hagy 12/24 & 1/2 Vacation Lisa Kustosik 12/29-1/2 Vacation Mary Hobart 12/2-12/3 Citizen Corps Conference `` 12/24 Vacation Steve Ford 12/12 Vacation `` 12/24-1/5 Vacation Rick Lindquist 12/22-12/24 Vacation Zoe Belliveau 12/29-12/31 Vacation Kathy Capodicasa 12/2 Jury Duty Mark Dzamba 12/1-12/5 Vacation Pam Dzamba 12/1-12/5 Vacation Lisa Tardette 12/24pm-1/2 Vacation Cathy Stepina 12/23-12/24 Vacation Rosalie White 12/3 Jury Duty Steve Ewald 12/1-12/8 Vacation Scott Gee 12/5-12/8 Vacation `` 12/29 Vacation Bob Inderbitzen 12/4-12/5 Vacation Deb Jahnke 12/24-1/2 Vacation John Hennessee 12/19-12/29 Vacation Perry Williams 12/23-12/29 Vacation Joe Carcia 12/19 Vacation Bill Moore 12/11-12/16 Vacation Jeri Forest 12/15-12/16 Vacation Wayne Mills 12/19-12/31 Vacation Dan Henderson 12/22-12/29 Vacation Martin Cook 12/29-12/30 Vacation 12/31pm Vacation Sandy Lund 12/29-12/31 Vacation Kathy Allison 12/29-1/2 Vacation Joel Kleinman 12/16 Vacation Monique Levesque 12/24pm-1/2 Vacation Fatima Lorusso 1/2 Vacation