Hi, Jim. Yes, there's a tradeoff as usual, but no doubt a non-custom letter is better than no letter. I always personalize these things anyway, but I realize many don't have the time to do so or let the resolve fade before completing the task. One of the reasons I encourange at least a little editing comes frm having read the FCC comment summary on a proposed ruling a few years back. When they were "counting" the support letters and opposition letters, the form ones were lumped together and, despite their numbers, treated almost as one letter in that summary. Anything that distinguishes a position paper from similar ones improves its chance of being given more weight. Thanks for putting so much effort into this at Dayton and elsewhere. 73, Marty N6VI ----- Original Message ----- From: K8JE To: arrl-odv Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 12:47 PM Subject: RE: [arrl-odv:17776] Re: Automated Letter Site Marty, You, of course, are right on target regarding customizing letters to congressmen (and women). I suspect that those of us who use club meetings and such gatherings as avenues to encourage members to write their congressmen usually encourage them to customize the letter to the extent they feel comfortable. If only our Divisions budgets allowed us to have travelling offices with banks of computers . . . Until then, the compromise of sending cookie cutter letters at large gatherings may be the best trade-off between unmet promises to write after "I" get home. 73, Jim Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director ARRL Great Lakes Division 5065 Bethany Rd. Mason, OH 45040 E-mail: k8je@arrl.org, Tel.: 513-459-1661 ARRL - The national association for Amateur Radio ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Marty Woll [mailto:n6vi@socal.rr.com] Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 2:14 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:17776] Re: Automated Letter Site I applaud Trey's efforts, which should enable us to collect many more letters in support of this propsed legislation, and Dick's initiative in seeking his help. For those downloading on their own, another way to use it is to copy the text and paste it onto personal letterhead using Word or similar program. It then becomes easy to customize the letter a bit (preferable to even a well written form letter). I attach my own letter as an example of such customization. 73, Marty N6VI ----- Original Message ----- From: Richard J. Norton To: arrl-odv Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 10:14 PM Subject: [arrl-odv:17775] Re:Automated Letter-to-Congressional-Representative Site- Additional note - It was pointed out to me that the letter printed from the web-site with a header containing the web-site name and also a footer. This is a function of the page setup in your web-browser. In Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you may need to go to File, Page Setup, Headers and footers, and simply make both the header and footer blank. Your computer should then be able to print copies of the letters without any headers or footers. The letters are ready for printing directly. Also remember that Jim Weaver sends the package of signed letters to Chwat for delivery. 73, Dick, N6AA On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Richard J. Norton <richardjnorton@gmail.com> wrote: > At Dayton I helped Jim Weaver, K8JE, and his team at the ARRL > Legislative Action booth. Noticed that they were manually editing > letters to congressional representatives requesting support of H.R. > 2160. The letters were expected to be eventually delivered to the > representatives by our lobbyist, Chwat and Company > > This appeared to be a task that could be automated and also a task > that a volunteer might implement. > > I approached my friend and long-time ARRL volunteer Trey Garlough, > N5KO, with the problem. Trey is the driving force behind eham.com and > contesting.com . He also assists the ARRL contest program with log > collection. > > After a day or so of effort Trey produced the automated routine at > > http://www.kkn.net/cgi-bin/rjnorton.pl > > Just enter a callsign and the site determines the correct > congressional representative and essentially instantaneously produces > a letter. You are welcome to use the capability to produce letters at > events you find appropriate. > > The routine is slightly fragile in that if any of the web-sites used > to find the information fail, or change the format in which they > present data, the routines may not work. This is not expected, but > possible. > > I suspect that we could have produced thousands of letters at Dayton > if we had the capability available. > > RELATED DAYTON OBSERVATIONS > > I'm not suggesting that this letter writing campaign strikes me as > insuring success of our legislative program. However, I noticed two > things at Dayton. > > 1) I could approach anybody that passed by the booth and ask if they > would sign a letter to their congressman. 100 percent of them agreed, > and all seemed favorably impressed. > > 2) Just by the members seeing this operation, a number of them now > view the ARRL in a slightly different light. Maybe the League isn't > only a subscription to QST. > > For reason 2 alone, I thought the activity to be beneficial. > > 73, > > Dick Norton, N6AA >