IN-Newsletter Vol. 29, No. 1 January 4, 2006 -- Covers the period December 25-31. Upcoming Meetings and Events Annual Board Meeting January 20-21, 2006 in Windsor, CT Administration &Finance Committee January 19 in Newington, CT Programs & Services Committee January 19 CEO John Hennessee submitted updates to several regulatory Web pages and answered a wide range of regulatory questions. He also assisted amateurs with local government zoning problems in Watseka, IL (KC9FON) and Mesquite, TX KD5FGZ) and with a covenant problem in Port Isabel, TX (KI0G). Development The final two weeks of 2005 saw an exciting level of activity and a generous influx of contributions, especially for the ARRL Diamond Club. Final figures for 2005 will be ready for the Board meeting later in January. The new year has begun with carry-over contributions for Spectrum Defense Fund (totaling $4,021 with a very high average contribution of $121) and for the ear End campaign with carry-over contributions (totaling $1,313 with a high average contribution of $42). Work has begun on the first two campaigns of the year -- a limited appeal for the W1AW Endowment and a test campaign to build the Ham Aid fund. A new application is being prepared for the 2006 Combined Federal Campaign for federal employees. The ARRL Foundation has added three new scholarship awards for 2006 - the Challenge Met Scholarship, the Seth Horen, K1LOM, Memorial Scholarship and the Yasme Foundation Scholarship (five awards in 2006). The ARRL Foundation Annual Meeting will be held by conference call on Tuesday, January 24, 2006 at 8 pm. Production/Editorial Congratulations to Larry Wolfgang, WR1B, who has been named Managing Editor of QEX. The first issue under his aegis will be March/April 2006. The ARRL Letter and ARRL Audio News will resume their regular weekly schedule January 6. Sales & Marketing We have recorded over 800 returns from November's membership mailing to 20,000 lapsed members (General, Adv, and Extra)--an extraordinary 4% return, and still climbing. December product sales were $288,955, exceeding the sales forecast by $3,326. Sales of some of our mainstays were soft this month. However, brisk sales of our newer titles and non-ARRL products helped balance out much of the difference. In their second months, we continued to enjoy strong sales of new titles Basic Radio and Emergency Power for Radio Communications. Cumulative product sales in 2005 reached $2,961,877, exceeding forecast by $131,149. A great way to end the year! We were delighted to receive a good gathering of signed contracts for next years advertising. Previously this year, graphic designers Sue Fagan and Diane Szlachetka were selected as winners of the 2005 American Graphic Design Award. The award was a result of their design contributions to a special advertising section in May 2005 QST. The design was just published in the December 2005 issue of Graphic Design USA Magazine. There is a copy of the magazine available for viewing in the Advertising Dept. The congratulatory letter enclosed with the publication stated that all of the winners that appear in the nearly 300 page publication are the "cream of a competition that drew more than 10,000 entries." We were one of 462 firms represented that were winners out of those 10,000 entries. Online Courses An e-mailing to students that had graduated from the level 1 EmComm course but had not yet taken level 2 contributed to registrations from 21 additional students. The same thing was done for students that graduated level 2, resulting in 16 more registrations for the level 3 course. This doubled the registrations for these courses, as compared with November and December classes. More and more regularly, we hear from clubs that are pursuing grant monies to pay for training students in the ARRL EmComm courses. One of those clubs enrolled 21 students this week (with orders for 21 level 1 manuals!). Jean Wolfgang is exploring ways to encourage more clubs to do the same thing, and has met with Mary Hobart as she begins to investigate the grant process. Our goal is to assemble some tips that can be shared with clubs. In December, we enrolled 197 students. ON-LINE COURSES Registrations During this week Graduations Antenna Modeling (EC-004) 2 1 HF Digital (EC-005) 2 0 RFI (EC-006) 0 0 VHF/UHF (EC-008) 1 0 Antenna Design and Construction (EC-009) 0 0 Technician Licensing (EC-010) 5 1 Propagation (EC-011) 0 0 Analog Electronics (EC-012) 0 0 Digital Electronics (EC-013) 0 0 Emergency Comm. Level 1 (EC-001) 11 28 Emergency Comm. Level 2 (EC-002) 17 15 Emergency Comm. Level 3 (EC-003) 15 4 Membership Services Awards Branch Awards Mailed 47 Replacement Award 1 A-1 Operator Nominations 7 A-1 Operator Certificates 1 Assorted Other DXCC Items Mailed 11 Various DXCC Plaques Shipped 52 Charges for DXCC Plaques 3 VUCC Initial Applications 5 Grids 471 VUCC Endorsement Applications 4 Grids 103 Also prepared the paperwork for 40 various DXCC plaque orders, which entails researching each record to verify award eligibility, award numbers, dates, etc., plus tallying the charges for them. Processing Status: Current or up to three weeks. For the coming week-WAS QSL card checking, Extra Class certificates, proof the VUCC data entry completed by DXCC staff, and do the orders for the latest batch of various DXCC plaques. Logbook of the World QSO records entered into system 87,481,644 QSL records have resulted 4,449,017 Logs Processed 173,103 Active Certificates 16,935 Users registered in the system 11,237 Hybrids Pending Mail 119 QSL Branch There is a 5 day processing time delay. This week, 128 pounds of cards were received from members. QSL Stats Cards received from members 128 pounds Cards Mailed this week 44,800 2005 Year-End total cards mailed 1,137,500 2004 Tear-End total cards mailed 1,100,535 Increase from last year 37,015 W1AW Jon Bloom, KE3Z and Joe finally made 2-way contacts with Bill Moore, N5ZPR and Jim McClellan, N5MIJ (both in Texas) via the D-Star 23cm repeater. Bill and Jim are two of the Texas D-Star sysops that have been assisting the station with getting the D-Star gateway (Internet side) up and running. Although all stations involved were using RF, the connection was made via the Internet. Special thanks to Jon for his setting up the network PC and software. Joe spent pretty much all week dealing with the heavy volume of visitors that is common during the week between Christmas and New Years. He also continued with experimenting with the D-Star repeater system, and finished inputting 2005 FMT entries into the database. 2005 marked the 13th year of the "3 Steves and a Kurt" operation from W1AW. Each year, three hams named "Steve" and one named "Kurt" will visit W1AW one day during the holiday week and operate the station. They will also bring one or two new hams with them. These hams are all from New Jersey. This past operation saw 530+ QSOs racked up, all made on 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 6 and 2 meters using CW and SSB. One of the Steves-KF2TI-was also the first visitor to put the donated Kenwood TS-480SAT on the air. A web site (which shows their visits) is located at, http://www.3stevesandkurt.dynu.com Scott worked on fast and slow code practice files for the month of January. He also handled some evening phone sales calls in the daily 5 PM to 8 PM time slots. Scott continues to assist the DXCC department by proof-reading applications that have been inputted into the DXCC system (but require a check of the work). W1AW Nightly Telephone Sales year to date (for all of 2005): $39,017. W1AW Nightly Telephone Sales (since assuming the responsibility in 1998): $275,250. Field & Educational Services Field Organization/Public Service Team Leona Adams and Steve Ewald have been assisting and keeping in touch with newly elected or newly appointed Section Managers in Delaware, Western Massachusetts and Maryland/DC as they begin their first terms of office at the beginning of the new year. Leona handled a dozen 2005 section-related expenses. Thanks to the Mailroom Staff for sending out the Virginia Section Manager ballots ahead of schedule. Members in Virginia will have until February 17th to vote and return their ballots. Don Michalski, W9IXG, has been nominated to continue as Wisconsin Section Manager for a new term beginning in July, 2006. Steve Ewald has been handling additional Ham Aid applications and some inquiries that arrived. We have received 203 individual applications since the Ham Aid grant was first announced during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. Chuck Skolaut received more documentation relating to an earlier FCC monitoring request on a 75-meter case. The ARRL's monthly report was forwarded to the IARU Region 2 coordinator listing intruders reported during December. We have received reports of jamming to a 440 MHz repeater in New York and interference to a 2-meter machine in Missouri. Two new Official Observer applicants successfully passed their exams to join this corps of Field Organization volunteers. Chuck helped conduct tours this week, and several visitors enjoyed their first time at League HQ. ARISS PR: Radio Netherlands aired a 52-minute interview (http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en <http://mymail.arrl.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw /en> ) of Andre Kuipers, PI9ISS, who described his ISS experiences, twice referring to ARISS school QSOs. Over 300 people watched the Flint (MI) ARISS QSO; the Flint Journal carried its story at www.mlive.com/news/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/news-33/1135266661268.xml&c oll=5 <http://www.mlive.com/news/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/news=33/11352666612 68.xml&coll=5> ), NASA-TV ran live coverage, and Webcasts were done through EchoLink (44 connections including 7 repeaters) and EDU_Net, and broadcast into the IRLP Discovery Reflector. Japan's CQ magazine ran an article on SuitSat. ARISS News Update: Hams told the ARISS Team that they enjoyed QSOs with cosmonauts during the Russian Star Patrol holiday event. The ISS repeater is turned back on after it was shut off for that event. Rosalie sent email as a heads-up to Directors, Vice Directors and SMs whose constituents take part in early January school QSOs; she included a bit of background on school scheduling. She prepared a summary for the COO report on ARISS progress in 4th quarter 2006. ARISS' Affect on Schools/Students: The Mt. Carmel (CA) ARISS teacher reports that one of his students who is a ham, now hopes to work at Jet Propulsion Lab. Also, the student who pushed the school to apply for an ARISS QSO, is now a University of Colorado EE major. A Carman Park (MI) elementary teacher wrote that pupils learned about radio propagation from their NASA education specialist, and studied the ISS module. International Aspects: Johnson Space Center is pushing the ARISS US Team to work more quickly on a charter that will spell out what resources the space agencies and international ham groups will provide; the team will focus heavily on the charter in January. Amateur Radio Education & Technology Program-Mark Spencer During this short holiday week I responded manly to member questions about Kid's Day operating procedures. The major theme of these questions concerned clarification of control operator responsibilities. Additional help and guidance on a satellite antenna system was provided to the Reno school scheduled for a January ARISS contact. Their antenna tracking bugs appear to now be fixed. Sincerely Compiled by, Lisa Kustosik, KA1UFZ Assistant to the CEO Staff Absentee List Lisa Kustosik 1/10 Vacation Rick Lindquist 12/27-1/6 Vacation Joel Kleinman 1/5 Vacation Ed Hare 1/9-1/13 IEEE Committee Meeting, LasVegas, NV `` 3/12-3/17 ANSI Committee Meeting, Piscataway, NJ Kathy Capodicasa 2/8-2/17 Vacation Bob Inderbitzen 2/6-2/10 Vacation