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 -----
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
>