IN-Newsletter Vol. 27, No. 51 December 22, 2004 Upcoming Meetings Board Meeting January 21-22, 2005 in Windsor, CT Development With a generous $12,000 contribution the 2005 Spectrum Defense Fund has topped $210,000. The new Year-End campaign has exceeded $12,500 from 400 donors. The first group of Member Award plaques have been sent to 50-, 60- and 70- year members who requested them. Thanks to CFO Barry Shelley whose unflagging efforts brought in the final distribution from the Kane Estate in the ARRL Endowment. A Diamond Club solicitation card to be mailed with each new or renewing membership card is at the printer. Debra Johnson is working with Jon Bloom on an e-renewal process for Diamond Club members. Media & Public Relations A 30-second ARRL-PSA has been placed on the web and is receiving a lot of interest from PIO's. BPL responses continue. Toy drive summary press release done and out. PIO page re-done. Awaiting votes for the winner to be determined from among Leonard Award candidates. Production/Editorial The February 2005 issue of QST has been released to the printer. Rick Lindquist reports The ARRL Letter, Vol. 23, No. 49, distributed on December 17 to 67,353 members, up 137 from the previous week. Rick prepared/edited stories on the ARRL's letter to FCC re the Jack Gerritsen case; a Canadian ARISS school group QSO; BPL industry's reaction to EarthLink's ex parte report to the FCC; Gary Hoffman's "The Amateur Amateur" column and several news briefs. Rick also wrapped up work on the expanded (6 pp) "Happenings" column for February QST. Rick voiced, edited and produced ARRL Audio News for Friday, December 17. The last edition of The ARRL Letter for 2005 will go out a day early, December 23. No edition on December 31. Joel Hallas reports that Lab testing is complete for the March installment of the Product Review column. Sales & Marketing The Dayton Hamvention committee committed to a QST advertising plan, beginning with the February issue. We collaborated with them to produce a full-page ad that wraps Hamvention and the 2005 ARRL National Convention into one single presentation. The ad encapsulates many of the goals developed by the ad-hoc National Convention committee. We assisted the advertising manager of Texas Towers with requests for ARRL publication images to add to their web site. December publication sales continue to accrue, having hit the $200,000 mark by Monday, Dec. 20. Direct sales have been advanced by the introduction of a handful of new titles and two email solicitations sent during the week. Kenwood USA has agreed to assist ARRL with our membership recruitment efforts via an aggressive new type of campaign, involving all Kenwood dealers. Discussions of the plan details and implementation are currently underway. The advertising section of February QST was completed on Friday. This issue will be the first against the [January] 2005 revenue plan, and our preliminary reports estimate that advertising for the month will exceed expectations by approximately $9,000. The Advertising team is now turning its full attention to procuring Repeater Directory advertising commitments. Membership Services Awards Branch WAC QSL Cards Checked 204 Extra Class Certs. 31 A-1 Op. Noms. 14 Awards Mailed 141 Also completed the annual report for the January BOD meeting. Processing Status: Current or up to three weeks. For the coming week-WAS QSL card checking, U.S. WAC, VUCC, WAS in the 90th, and A-1 Operator awards, and mail out all awards processed this week. Contest Branch August UHF line scores were prepared and sent to Production to be added to the PDF of the write-up. August UHF certificates were printed and will being mailing during the next 2 weeks. June VHF certificates were printed and will begin mailing during the next 2 weeks. Data entry for November Sweepstakes and International EME Competition continued. Results articles for the 2004 IARU HF Championships and 2004 10 GHz and Up Competition were received from the authors, prepared internally, and sent to Production and Web Services. DXCC Branch For the week of: December 19, 2004 Beginning Cards 59,519 Cards Received 14,331 Cards Processed 14,087 Ending Cards 59,763 Applications Pending 441 Processing Time 6.1 Weeks DXCC is currently mailing applications received on November 3, 2004. DXCC is currently entering cards received on November 5, 2004. Turnaround time for applications with just LoTW credits is one working day. Two card checkers were appointed by JARL and approved. Logbook of the World QSO records entered into the system 58,487,891 QSL records have resulted 2,270,883 Logs Processed 86,899 Active Certificates 12,471 Users registered in the system 8,490 Current Applications 40 Ready Applications 0 Applications Awaiting Mail 40 QSL Bureau Processing time is 5 days. This week 73 pounds of cards were received from members. Cards mailed as of 12/19/04: 1,019,860. No cards were mailed this week. The final mailing for 2004 will be on 12/30/04. W1AW Joe worked the late afternoon/night shifts on Monday and Tuesday for a vacationing Scott Gee. Because of upgrades made to the ARRL LAN, W1AW's access to it has been affected since the station still uses Win98SE. (The PCs currently in use at W1AW will not support WinXP.) Therefore, Joe had to move a few printers around, and remove printer and file access to/from these particular PCs. Joe continued with inputting 2004 FMT entries. To date, there are 105 entries. (The FMT postmark date for entries was December 17.) Scott worked on slow and fast code practice files for the later part of the month of December and early January 2005. He also handled some evening phone sales calls in the daily 5 PM to 8 PM time slots. Field & Educational Services Rosalie got news of a Brazilian certificate to be awarded to scouts who hear a future ISS QSO; a request to use the ARRL diamond and AMSAT logos was okayed. Last week's ARISS QSO with schools in Ireland was transmitted on the Irish national broadcast radio station; visiting academia's been delighted with the events and thanked ARISS volunteers. Rosalie networked with Chris Imlay, Frank Bauer and Gaston Bertels about a 3rd party waiver for the ARISS Belgian ground station. Rosalie and Norm discussed 2004 and 2005 goals, and ways to further work with Affiliated Club Coordinators and club mentors who aid new hams with technical issues. Gail Iannone sent eight hamfest approval letters and two convention approval letters to sponsoring committees confirming the Division Director's approval of events as ARRL-sanctioned. She processed seven hamfest and convention material orders and four label requests for events. She sent 12 convention applications and 14 new club applications for ARRL affiliation to the Executive Committee for approval. She sent 12 letters to convention sponsors notifying them of the EC's approval of their events as ARRL-sanctioned. Clubs/Mentors/Volunteer Instructors Norm Fusaro wrote a Web story about a new ham and his Elmer in Minnesota. The new ham wanted to present his mentor with the ARRL Elmer Award. The story carried a sidebar that was used as a lead-in to our Elmer certificate, and Margie wrote the side bar text. Norm gathered pieces of information for other articles for future publication. He met with Rosalie and provided an update on his program for the BOD meeting in January. Margie Bourgoin updated 30 affiliated club records and registered eight Volunteer Instructors. She processed two SSC renewals and forwarded three applications for approval. Margie sent out CNCS certificates and reimbursement checks as well as ones for UTC grads. She is coordinating with Norm on a blurb that advertises the Elmer Certificate and on creating a version of the certificate for members to download from the Internet. CCE Jean Wolfgang gathered statistics for her portion of the department report, covering activities about technical, and Technician license on-line courses, to the Board. Compared to the same time last year, participation in these courses has increased by 53%. This is likely due to listing the courses in the on-line catalog and in a few news articles. Jean set up a Hybrid emcomm class that will begin Dec 17, along with three other emcomm classes and a Technician license course. She received a few phone calls from members who want to give a Christmas gift of an online course to another family member or friend -- pretty cool!! Community Education Project (CEP) Bill Barrett reports that his meeting with Danbury town officials gave him insight into how to tweak some things in his program. The meeting provided useful new ideas for improving the demonstration guidelines for the local hams that will assist, and the local action plan for hams, following the meeting with the Citizen Corps Councils. Follow-up "thank you," including one to the mayor, were designed. Bill is recording MP3 files of the individual audio track clips matching the PowerPoint slide frames. The files will be sent to Dan Wolfgang for inclusion in the CD PowerPoint version. Field Organization/Public Service Team Steve Ewald traveled to a Washington DC meeting of the Citizen Corps Affiliates where he networked with nearly 50 affiliate representatives and Citizen Corps staff members. Discussions included a review of 2004 activities and setting goals for 2005; Steve will prepare a full trip report. He participated in the ARESCOM teleconference and worked with Leona on preparations for SM elections. Chuck Skolaut reviewed five audio tapes sent by Official Observers and forwarded them to the FCC. These were in direct response to an FCC monitoring request about 75 meters. Another case of unlicensed hunters in West Virginia using 2-meter simplex frequencies has surfaced. From California, we received a report of interference to a satellite downlink frequency; it is apparently coming from an Amateur TV repeater. Leona Adams received the statements and photographs from the Section Manager candidates in North Texas and Arkansas and has begun to re-format these prior to printing. Section Leaders continue to send in their end-of-the year expense reports to Leona for processing reimbursement requests. Regulatory Information John Hennessee organized and labeled the boxes containing the HQ Callbook collection. He assisted an amateur in St. Louis, MO (ND0W) with a local government zoning problem. He wrapped up loose ends on a number of matters prior to next week's vacation. EmComm Grants Dan Miller firmed up travel plans for the 3rd and final CNCS grant year. The first exhibit will be at the National Emergency Management Association in Washington, DC in February. Dan renewed memberships for 2005 with emcomm related organizations that sponsor events where we plan to exhibit -- discounts for member exhibitors far exceed the membership fees. Available seats for the Level I emcomm course in December were filled up after 12 hours of the course opening. Sincerely, Dave Patton, NN1N Special Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer DCP: lk Staff Absentee List All Staff 12/24 Holiday `` 12/31 Holiday Dave Sumner 12/27-12/28 Vacation Mark Dzamba 12/27-12/30 Vacation Pam Dzamba 12/27-12/30 Vacation Gail Iannone 12/20-12/31 Vacation Di Szlachetka 12/27-12/30 Vacation John Hennessee 12/18-12/28 Vacation Wayne Mills 12/20-12/30 Vacation Dan Henderson 12/21-12/30 Vacation Maryann Macdonald 12/27-12/31 Vacation Karen Isakson 12/17-12/24 Vacation Linda Kleinschmidt 12/20-12/24 Vacation Steve Ford 12/27-1/2 Vacation Rick Lindquist 12/27-12/30 Vacation Lisa Tardette 12/27 Vacation Fatima Lorusso 12/27-12/30 Vacation Greg Kwasowski 12/21-1/3 Vacation Mark Spencer 12/15-12/24 Vacation Dan Miller 12/20-12/30 Vacation Joel Hallas 12/23 Vacation Stu Cohen 12/20-12/23 Vacation Deb Jahnke 12/27-12/30 Vacation Bob Schetgen 12/21-12/28 Vacation Leona Adams 12/23-12/27 Vacation Norm Fusaro 12/20-12/23 Vacation Dave Patton 12/30 Vacation Debra Johnson 12/27-12/29 ½ Vacation days Mary Hobart 12/27-12/29 ½ Vacation days