Frank: Just to be clear, my intent is not “to go after” Rich Moseson. The purpose of the piece would be to be to reply to his questions in the same forum in which they were posed. Essentially, the idea is 1. To explain what happen and why. 2. To show we haven’t been acting as a “Secret Society”, rather we have acted responsibly and maintained confidentiality when appropriate. 3. We recognize an ongoing need to keep our members informed and are striving to improve in that regard. 4. There is no agenda hidden or otherwise other than a good faith effort to act in the best interests of our members and Amateur Radio. Our recent discussions relating to withdrawal of the RM 11306 petition led me to belief there was a consensus on the Board that we needed to do a better job of explaining and making the case for our actions. The suggestion is simply a first step toward that end. The CQ editorial merely provides an opportunity to begin. 73, Jay, KØQB -----Original Message----- From: Frank Fallon [mailto:n2ff@optonline.net] Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:22 AM To: John Bellows Cc: arrl-odv Subject: Re: A way to respond to the CQ "Secret Society" Editorial Jay, I have mixed feelings about going after Rich and CQ or even continuing to pursue the regulation by bandwidth issue. I think Rich is speaking for a lot of our members here. Neither he nor our members understand exactly what happened. We did not handle these matters well at all. We took too long to make our "ex parte" meeting public and when we did we were not totally honest and upfront about why we withdrew the petition. I view the entire episode as a public relations disaster. There are already too many folks in the US living an alternate reality. Please let's not join them. Rich has been supportive on previous issues but we have not always thanked him for that support. Hands up, who thanked him. But we do jump on him when he does not agree with or support us. By all means lets have Dave and Joel begin a dialog with Rich and CQ, but drawing further attention to his negative editorial is probable a mistake. I guess part of my problem on this issue is that I can see why he came to the conclusion he did re the Red Cross and RM 11306. I see why "W2VU asserts ARRL is 'revealing information only when absolutely necessary, and saying one thing while doing another.' ” Reread the QST article on the Red Cross security checks and see what our stated policy is and then compare that to the quotes from Dave Patton on the same issue. They do not say the same thing. There were times during the Red Cross issue where I thought we were talking out of both sides of our collective mouth. A number of members told me exactly that and some of them were elected SM's. No one has chosen to attempt to answer my previous question as to why we need to continue to pursue regulation by bandwidth. I believe that any future attempt to attain the lofty goal will be viewed by the US ham community and our members in a very negative light. I think we simply have too much to loose by continuing down this trail. It has now been heavily mined. It's a good idea but..... Just because it is a good idea does not mean that we should shove it down our members throats. My mother use to do that with cod liver oil. In many ways it is similar to dropping the CW exam for an HF license. The US was nearly the last country to do it. It, regulation by bandwidth, will I believe, be done elsewhere. I think this is something for IARU to handle. 73 de Frank...N2FF...... John Bellows wrote:

In his “Secret Society” editorial in the June 2007 issue of CQ Magazine Rich Moseson, W2VU describes, sometimes incorrectly, the recent actions of ARRL with regard to the RM 11306 band width petition. He also speaks to League’s actions regarding the broad scale

background check requirements imposed by the American Red Cross. W2VU asserts ARRL is “revealing information only when absolutely necessary,

and saying one thing while doing another.”

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