<<060607.doc>> IN-Newsletter <<Microsoft Word Picture>> Vol. 30, No. 23 June 6, 2007 -- Covers the period May 27-June 2. Upcoming Meetings and Events Administration & Finance Committee July 19 in Newington, CT Second Board Meeting July 20-21, 2007 in Windsor, CT CEO Office Reported by Lisa Kustosik, KA1UFZ Congratulations to the ARRL Team that participated in the American Cancer Relay for Life this past weekend. They raised over $3,000 and also had chance to make a few contacts with the ham radio that they set up. Regulatory Information Reported by Dan Henderson, N1ND The Pave Paws radar problem continues to be on the front burner. In preparation for contacting the affected repeater owners with the details of the mitigation plan and timetables, the first draft of our letter was written and circulated for additions / changes / corrections to Chris Imlay, Paul Rinaldo, Ed Hare, Dave Sumner, Joel Harrison, Allen Pitts and Directors Frenaye and Vallio. On Friday afternoon the official response from the Department of Defense officials was received and will be included in the certified mailing going out the week of June 4. Also during the weeks some data problems were discovered in the ARRL Contest results for an upcoming event. As the Contest Manager was on vacation during the week, I stepped in and assisted in correcting the problems and prepared new tables to be used by the author for the results. We also continue to handle lots of queries related to the upcoming ARRL Field Day. On Friday I traveled to Atlanta to attend the Georgia State Convention in conjunction with the Atlanta Hamfest. I was pleasantly surprised when almost 60 people attended my ARRL Forum - more than double those attending forum last year. Media & Public Relations Reported by Allen Pitts, W1AGP The Annual Report is done and expected from the printer about June 14. Reinforcing announcements of the materials available promoting EmComm this year have been sent out and also submitted to QST. We are still awaiting Governor Rell's decision and reply to our Field Day invitation, and options are being created for her to speak with other state Governors via radio if she comes. There are less than 12k of the EmComm brochures left and, at the current request rate, these will go by Field Day. 60k more being ordered with the expectation that fulfillment will soon be able to be transferred to the new web based systems. Development Reported by Mary Hobart, K1MMH I traveled to the NW Division for the 25th Anniversary convention at Seaside. A crowd of 2500 spent the weekend strolling the aisles of the many vendors who were there, attending wonderful forums and operating the special event station, W1AW/7. Director Fenstermaker and five of the six Section Mangers from the Division were there and helped work the ARRL table. The ARRL Forum included an opportunity to honor Rick Campbell, KK7B, who was the winner of the 2007 Bill Orr Award in Technical Writing. Nearly 300 attended the Saturday evening banquet and hear remarks from me on the Development Program and joined in honoring the 2007 Chuck Mickley Memorial Scholarship winner, Steve Johnson, N7VIC. The Education & Technology Fund campaign is nearing its goal! Receipts to date total $75,957 from 812 donors for a very generous average contribution of more than $93. Delivery of more than 100 lucite replicas of bricks for the Diamond Terrace are expected this week. The preparation of the Terrace site will begin as soon as the concrete work is complete. Production/Editorial Reported by Joel Kleinman, N1BKE Rick Lindquist reports The ARRL Letter, Vol. 26, No. 22, distributed to 66,677 members on June 1. Rick prepared/edited news items on the ARRL's latest demand that the FCC shut down the Ambient Briarcliff Manor, NY, BPL pilot project; Dayton Hamvention FCC forum; FCC hearings on three ham radio applications, and various announcements and news briefs. He also has transferred various news bureau-related files to Khrystyne Keane, including info for new stories and news briefs. Rick assisted Khrystyne in voicing, editing and producing ARRL Audio News for June 1. Rick has begun submitting material for the July-August issue of NCJ. He adds: 73 to everyone, and thanks very much for the gift certificate! News items for the Web site and/or QST should be directed to Khrystyne Keane (news@arrl.org is the easiest way to reach her, but please note that newsmedia@arrl.org goes to Allen Pitts). Maty Weinberg served as co-chair of this past weekend's American Cancer Society Relay for Life event in Newington, and Jodi Morin was captain of Team ARRL. Well done! Sales and Marketing Reported by Bob Inderbitzen, NQ1R May product sales were $303,687; exceeding plan by $34,724. This overcame a $32k shortfall experienced last month, largely due to some flip/flopping between the months. We don't often break 300k in a single month, except during the fall/Handbook season. Membership for May demonstrated yet another increase, ending the month at 151,306. This is up 411 from April, and is 2,560 over our YTD projection. Katie attended the Rochester Hamfest/New York Convention over the weekend, and returned with 42 memberships, 23 of which were new/previous members. She held a forum on Saturday afternoon which was well attended, in spite of the lack of air conditioning! She was excited to see a large number of people waiting to participate in the VE sessions, at which ultimately over 70 people passed their tests. The local ABC affiliate Channel 13 WHAM (how ironic!) sent a reporter to the hamfest on Friday who spent 4 hours at the event and provided a nice and entertaining piece: http://www.13wham.com/mediacenter/local.aspx Planning for ARRL's exhibit at "Ham Radio" in Friedrichshafen (June 22 - 24) has been finalized. Exhibit materials supporting the ARRL and IARU have been shipped. Email addresses from membership applications and "ARRL Passport" entries collected at Dayton Hamvention are being keyboarded to support (1) our communication with members and (2) our direct marketing to membership prospects. Hundreds of new email addresses have been entered into the system thus far. A successful overview of the new Membership Renewal Web site was completed with the help of Web Services. The site is going thru some final revisions and should be up for internal use the week of June 15. The entire planning team hopes to "go live" on June 30. The new site will offer more online membership options, an easier renewal process, and an automated, secure method for charging credit cards. Long term integration into Siebel is right behind the redesign. The summer publication catalog has mailed, and has already increased the e-store traffic. July QST will be mailing 6/5 thru 6/12. The warehouse crew processed 693 packages of fulfillment orders during the shortened, holiday week. In addition, there were 355 free book membership premiums fulfilled, and three June QST mailing supplements. Steve Capodicasa, Amy Hurtado and Ann Marie Pinto all helped manage returns from Dayton-all inventoried, restocked and reconciled. Business Services Reported by Deb Jahnke Sales of advertising space in Ham Express 411 is proceeding very well. Our initial promotion was sent via email last Thursday and we have only a few pages available and are already very close to our revenue goal on this project. Our addition of a limited amount of editorial material (primarily the terrific material from March 2007 QST) has definitely increased the value to advertisers. We have more retailers on board and two of the three major manufacturers increased their presence dramatically. We are also working on the August issue of QST, including the Antenna Time Tear-Out section. I am following up with several new potential advertisers that I had meetings with at Hamvention. Covers 2, 3 and 4 of the DXCC Yearbook have been sold to ICOM America (2 covers) and Ham Radio Outlet (cover 4). Dealer Publication Sales Dealers report that sales of training materials are still very strong and initial reports indicate that sales of the new Antenna Book are following suit. A new Dealer Newsline is in the works (email version) recapping all the new titles since the beginning of the year and focusing on recently released new titles and editions. Membership & Volunteer Programs Reported by Dave Patton, NN1N Awards Branch Category April 2007 May 2007 Year-to-Date Year End Goal WAS Certificates (Manual) 30 31 126 282 WAS Certificates (LoTW) 15 21 116 295 A-1 Op Nominations 47 55 212 601 A-1 Op Certificates 26 32 105 288 Extra Class Certificates 9 4 136 194 WAC Certificates 44 9 136 313 VUCC New/Grids 6 / 711 4 / 380 27 / 4035 144 / 13,581 VUCC Endorsement/Grids 4 / 337 15 / 633 45 / 2447 109 / 6,533 Processing Time 2 Weeks 2 Weeks 2 Weeks DXCC Branch Category April 2007 May 2007 Year-to-Date Year End Goal Credits Processed 56,502 53,786 234,254 622,155 Credits Received 66,671 48,203 216,407 622,284 Applications Returned 526 491 2,413 5,642 Applications Received 914 416 3,042 5,644 Applications Pending 1,088 1,015 987 599 Processing Time 10 Weeks 9 Weeks 3 Weeks Logbook of the World Category April 2007 May 2007 2006 Year End QSO Records Entered Into System 128,066,270 131,022,872 116,730,953 QSL Record Matches 8,448,955 8,757,500 7,193,911 Logs Processed 363,807 379,984 305,569 Active Certificates 24,145 24,668 21.889 Registered Users in System 15,918 16,262 14,474 COO Note: We are adding this new report on the types of inquires that we receive for Logbook of the World support. This report will appear monthly and was compiled by Kathy Allison with assistance from Sharon Taratula. Logbook of the World Logbook (Email Only) Inquiries May 2007 Lost Certificate 107 User Email Problems 42 DXCC Status Inquiries 38 Cannot Log on to LoTW User Page 27 Lost Personal Password 26 Cannot Activate/Load TQ6 Certificate 23 WAS Status Inquiries 22 No TQ5 File Received by LoTW 21 Logbook Suggestions 20 Cannot Upload Log to LoTW User Page 18 Additional Certificate Requests 13 No TQ6 File Received from LoTW 12 Logbook Startup Inquiries 11 New Callsign Changes 9 Cannot Understand Error Messages 8 Other Inquiries 114 Total Inquiries 511 QSL Branch There is no delay in opening mail and a 2 day delay in slotting of cards. This week, 97 pounds of cards were received from members. W1AW Scott worked on fast and slow code practice files for the first half of the month of June. He also assisted the DXCC department with checking 278 database-inputted cards against DXCC applications. Field Organization/Public Service Team Chuck Skolaut compiled and forwarded the monthly ARRL Monitoring System/Intruder Watch report to the IARU Region 2 Coordinator. As a result of the article in June QST, two additional members were added to the monitoring team with several more in the process. Word was received that the Chinese jammer that had been heard on 18160 kHz has moved out of the band and is now on 18180 kHz. With occasional band openings on 10 meters, we have begun receiving reports of unlicensed operation there. The FCC monitoring station returned several reports to us concerning requests we had sent earlier. One such report involved checking for the second harmonic of a shortwave station, and another dealt with a New York taxi company operating just above 10 meters. Three more incumbent Section Managers have been nominated for new term of office beginning October 1. They are Bill Hillendahl, KH6GJV, San Francisco; Phineas Icenbice, W6BF, Los Angeles; and Ray Taylor, N5NAV, South Texas. Leona Adams handled correspondence with the first signers of the nominating petitions. She also took orders for and arranged for shipment of over a dozen exhibit kits that feature promotional handouts to the general public. With the advent of the Atlantic Hurricane season, WX4NHC at the National Hurricane Center scheduled its annual on-the-air test for June 2. U.S. Virgin Islands Section Manager John Ellis, NP2B, has agreed to serve as the main liaison for the Hurricane Watch Net group to ARRL HQ staff during this upcoming season. Steve Ewald is making plans to attend the National Citizen Corps Conference in Alexandria, Virginia from June 10 to 13. Education Services Reported by Debra Johnson, K1DMJ We completed follow-ups requested from contacts at Dayton. The convention generated many requests for education related materials and other items. A May newsletter to instructors and teachers sent May 31 included information about the new General Class licensing materials being released in June. Mark Spencer and I both took part in an on-line Technician course session being run as a trial on the WebEx platform. This is a new platform for licensing instruction being tested by an instructor in California. ARISS NASA's Public Affairs Office in Houston recorded this week's ARISS QSO, the 300th of the ARISS program. The first contact occurred December 21, 2000 from Burbank, IL. Last week's contact was an interview with Astronaut Sunita Williams. It was conducted during a teachers workshop and made an impression with the teachers. The Houston ARISS Team overheard six different teachers making cell phone calls to friends/family saying, "You won't believe it; I just heard an astronaut talking live to us at our conference." Education & Technology Program Mark is making the final preparations for two sessions of the Teachers Institute to be held in June. One will be at the Parallax facility in Rocklin, CA and the other at Spokane Community College in Spokane, WA. A presentation proposal that Mark submitted last year for the NSTA conference in Denver this November has been accepted. The topic will be bringing space technology into the classroom. Volunteer Examiner Coordinator Reported by Maria Somma, AB1FM VEC had another busy and prosperous month! 565 exam sessions were received and processed in May (usually we process about 450 sessions a month). May exam fee revenue is approximately $49,500 and the year to date total through May is over $301,000. We are just shy of the 2006 year end total of $324,000. With 580 sessions already registered for June, and over 350 sessions registered for July, it doesn't look like business will be slowing down anytime soon. At the Dayton Hamvention, traffic was brisk at the VEC booth with visitors conveying positive feedback and comments about the VEC program. I handed out approximately 400 individual license forms information packets, 65 Club license forms information packets and 120 Prospective VE packages. I sold 136 VE patches, took in 17 applications for renewals or license changes and re-enlisted 23 VEs with expired accreditations. I have completed the work on designing five new versions of the General Element 3 written exam booklets and answer keys and the new template key (for use with the plastic overlay grading templates). These new items must be in use starting July 1, 2007 in conjunction with the new General class question pool effective that day. The job has been submitted to the printers and our new exams are due back on June 13. We will be packing, shipping and supplying all our Field Stocked VE teams (near 1,000) with these new test booklets and keys about the 3rd week in June. Our ExamWin Software will get updated too. Teams that use our exam generating software will be able to download the new version from our web site about mid-June. The below stats show our accomplishments so far this year. I included information from the same period last year for a comparison. In most sections of our program, we have seen a considerable increase in activity! ARRL VEC Stats January 1 through May 31, 2007. 3,048 Test Sessions Held -- Jan 1 to May 31, 2006 = 2,359 25,786 Candidates Served -- Jan 1 to May 31, 2006 = 12,983 30,192 Exam Elements Taken -- Jan 1 to May 31, 2006 = 15,719 1,034 New VEs Accredited -- Jan 1 to May 31, 2006 = 536 21,937 New and Upgrade License application forms transmitted to FCC -- Jan 1 to May 31, 2006 = 8,671 3,523 License Renewals and Changes transmitted to FCC -- 366 were Vanity license renewals 639 Club License apps. transmitted to FCC -- 102 were Club Vanity license renewals & 254 new clubs 5,440 VE Newsletter Subscribers 15 Donations collected by VEC ARRL - Web Statistics Reported by Hugh Brower May 2007 Page views: 7.9 million Avg. per day: 258.000 Unique visitors (month): 402,000 Most popular: Home page, News, F&ES, Contests, TIS, W1AW, FCC, Members Only, VEC, Catalog, Classifieds Visitors from: USA 84%, China 2%, Canada, France, Japan, UK (all 1% each) Top referring sites: Google, Yahoo, AC6V.com, SingingFish (AOL), MSN, DXZone.com, RFZone.org, QSL.net Number of visitors referred from Google (top site): 115,000 No. referred from Lycos (#10 search engine): 27 Top search phrases: ARRL, ARES, Field Day, LOTW, DXCC, QST, Ham Radio, Band Plan, Morse Code, AARL, Hamfest, certificate wording, Amateur Radio Sincerely Compiled by, Lisa Kustosik, KA1UFZ Assistant to the CEO Staff Absentee List All Staff 7/4 Holiday Jon Bloom 6/15 Vacation Katie Breen 6/14-6/26 Vacation `` 6/28-7/1 Iowa State Convention `` 7/30-8/3 Vacation Joe Carcia 6/28-7/6 Vacation `` 7/13 Vacation `` 7/20 Vacation `` 7/27 Vacation `` 8/3-8/10 Vacation Steve Ewald 6/10-6/13 Citizen Corps Conference; Alexandria, VA Steve Ford 6/13-6/15 SNAP Publishing Conference, Washington, DC Perry Green 7/25-7/28 NCVEC Conference, Gettysburg, PA Mike Gruber 6/4-6/8 Vacation Joel Hallas 6/22 Vacation Ed Hare 7/8-7/13 EMC Society Symposium Committee Meeting, Honolulu, HI Dan Henderson 8/16-8/28 ARRL National Convention, Huntsville, AL/Vacation Mary Hobart 6/15 Vacation `` 8/17-8/19 ARRL National Convention, Huntsville, AL `` 9/7-9/9 MFJ Anniversary/Starkville MS `` 9/14-9/16 W9DX Convention, Chicago, IL `` 9/28-9/29 TenTac, Pigeon Forge, TN Bob Inderbitzen 6/8 Vacation `` 6/21-6/26 Vacation `` 7/16-7/20 Vacation Khrystyne Keane 6/7-6/10 West Gulf Division Convention, Plano, TX `` 6/11 Vacation Joel Kleinman 6/13-6/15 SNAP Publishing Conference, Washington, DC Zak Lau 6/21-6/22 Vacation Bill Moore 6/8-6/10 West Gulf Division Convention, Plano, TX Dave Patton 6/19-6/25 Friedrichshafen Germany Convention Allen Pitts 6/13-6/15 Vacation Maria Somma 6/19-6/27 Friedrichshafen Germany Convention `` 7/13-7/22 Vacation `` 7/25-7/28 NCVEC Conference, Gettysburg, PA `` 8/16-8/19 ARRL National Convention, Huntsville, AL Dave Sumner 6/10-6/25 ITU-R WP8A Geneva, and Friedrichshafen Germany `` 6/29-7/3 Vacation `` 8/1-8/6 Vacation `` 8/15-8/19 GAREC/ARRL National Convention, Huntsville, AL `` 9/8-9/15 IARU Reg. 2 Conference, Brasilia Larry Wolfgang 6/21-6/22 Vacation