Nice work, Jim.
I had the pleasure of attending the SM Workshop with John Meyers back
when I had the East Bay SM position, and I completely agree with your
assessment. We have to take care of the folks out on the front line
with the membership.
Your experience with explaining the "why" of the decision
matches mine. Many members actually blame the ARRL for the
reduction of the code speed requirement to 5 WPM. There is very
little understanding of why the FCC changed the requirement or that it's
simply not an option that is on the table when we deal with them.
We have a LOT of educating to do. Very few continue to argue points
when I tell them that the FCC is not about to embark on anything that
will cost them money, which includes having to change ULS or
re-instituting the "special accommodation" process that goes
along with higher code speed tests. Once members hear and
understand the political and economic realities, most calm down and begin
to see our position.
-- Andy Oppel, N6AJO
Pacific Division Vice Director
At 12:41 PM 1/26/2004, you wrote:
It looks
as though we aren’t going to be recalled after all! Darn!
I just talked with
Tony DiPrato on the telephone for about 45
minutes during which I explained why we did what we did. It turns
out he hadn’t seen any of the newsletters I’d sent out on the
restructuring proposal. He had set his arrl.net address to forward
to a secondary E-mail address and had somehow missed seeing these.
Anyway, after we talk and commiserated he came to understand what we are
trying to do and the constraints with which we were operating – i.e.
forget asking for things FCC will definitely not accept (ex 20 wpm
code).
I guess y’all’l have to put up with me for
another couple of years after all. I withdraw my offer of a
vacation in the Bahamas for all of us (after
being recalled).
Incidentally, we all know how valuable good SMs
are. It turns out that SM John Meyers,
NB4K talked with Tony before me and took most of the tank traps and
barriers out of the field for me. He’s a good man.
73, GL,
Jim W.
AMATEUR
RADIO: The only fail-safe communications system in the
world.
ARRL:
The reason Amateur Radio is!
Jim
Weaver, K8JE, Director, Great Lakes Division ARRL
5065 Bethany Rd., Mason, OH 45040-9660, Tel. 513-459-0142, E-mail k8je@arrl.org
Andy Oppel
andy@andyoppel.com