IN-Newsletter Vol. 26, No. 27 July 9, 2003 Upcoming Meetings July 17th in Windsor, CT at 8:30am Board Leadership Development Session July 18-19 in Windsor, CT Board Meeting Development Campaign results to date are as follows: 2003 Spectrum Defense 657 donations $40,317 Avg $61.36 WRC-03 special campaign 775 donations $35,139 Avg $45.34 BPL special campaign 43 donations $33,346 Avg $776.48 Total 2003 Spectrum Defense 1475 donations $108,802 Avg $ 73.76 Education & Technology Fund 1452 donations $78,264 Avg $53.90 Historic Preservation (test) 14 donations $475 Avg $33.92 The BPL campaign is just beginning to see its first returns. Most of the 43 donations have come over the web as a result of the article that appeared on the ARRL website. A special letter to ARRL advertisers is being prepared. The Historic Preservation Fund test mailing may be overshadowed by the BPL issue. Preparations are underway for the next issue of the Legacy Circle Letter, promoting estate planning. The next issue will be mailed to existing Legacy Circle members and 4500 prospects. A new bequest commitment to ARRL came in last week. The renewal application for the CNCS grant for Year Two is underway and due at CNCS on July 14. Production/Editorial We checked printer's proofs for The FCC Rule Book, and we reordered QST View 1965-69 and Amateur Radio Today. We released the 2003 Central States Proceedings to the printer. Rick Lindquist wrote or edited several stories for the ARRL Web site, including a report (based on information from Dave Sumner) regarding the Final Acts of the World Radiocommunication Conference 2003, an ARISS contact with the Challenger Center in Indiana and the opening of the new 60 meter channels. The ARRL Letter and ARRL Audio News were not published on the holiday July 4. Dave Hassler completed his monthly Web column "ARRL-in-Action," composed a number of small briefs for the ARRLWeb and worked with several authors on upcoming Web feature articles. Sales & Marketing It has been brought to our attention that an individual or company is trying to sell subscriptions to QST "before the price increase." ARRL is currently not using any telemarketing activities to sell or renew memberships. Another twist to their sales approach is to allege to be a magazine reseller able to offer QST magazine less expensively than what our members pay us for membership. ARRL does not have any subscription company trying to sell QST. To date, we have heard from over a dozen members who have been contacted with these bogus offers. A few of them have been contacted two or three times. We continue to welcome member reports so that we may continue to locate the source of these calls. Although not perfect quite yet, progress is being made with the processing of backorders using the Siebel system. Individual customer orders are now processed without needing to manually split the order off into in-stock versus out-of-stock items. This one step has greatly improved our ability to process orders in a timely manner and reduce the amount of duplication and manual processing needed to handle backordered items. Bob Inderbitzen and Dennis Motschenbacher spent the short week following up on special requests and action items that had collected during their trips to the ARRL National Convention and Friedrichshafen, Germany. On Thursday, Bob prepared and distributed an email solicitation to help drive additional traffic to the ARRLWeb catalog throughout the July 4th holiday weekend. A free shipping offer was extended to members placing orders totaling $50 or more. Even before staff left for the long weekend, the solicitation was generating brisk ordering activity, and the fulfillment staff has been busy handling orders this week. Now available via the ARRLWeb catalog: AC Power Interference Handbook <http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=9055>. This book was written Marv Loftness, KB7KK. Bob secured a special agreement with the author that makes ARRL the exclusive distributor of this second edition. The timing of this new edition is opportune with current interest in broadband over power line (BPL) topics. Membership Services Awards Branch WAS QSL Cards Checked 300 RCCs 6 OTCs 4 L/T Member Inquiries 5 A-1 Operator Noms. 12 VUCC Initial Apps. 3 Grids 441 VUCC End. Apps. 1 Grids 22 VUCC Backfill Apps. 1 Grids 102 Awards Mailed 19 Also worked on report for MSD/BOD. Processing Status: Current or up to three weeks. For the coming week-Basic WAS awards for June, (foreign) WAC awards, VUCC awards processing/mailing, order 5-BWAS plates, and complete filing chores for the 50- and 60-year member awards-related correspondence from this year to date. Contest Branch The International DX Phone scores were merged and boxes prepared for the author and web. The International DX CW article was received and edited to send to Production and the web. Post Field-Day queries were handled. Manual updating of the Logs Received page for the 2003 June VHF QSO party continued. Some miscellaneous pins for several contests were shipped. DXCC Branch Weekly Report July 7, 2003 Beginning Cards 92,995 Cards Received 643 Cards Processed 13,135 Ending Cards 80,503 Applications Pending 633 Processing Time 6.9 Weeks Year-to-date (2003) Cards Received 251,843 Cards Returned 387,630 QRPs issued this week 1 QRPs issued total 297 DXCC is currently mailing applications received on May 19, 2003. DXCC is currently entering cards received on May 19, 2003. Dave Patton, NT1N, returned from Friedrichshafen after checking 214 DXCC applications with 29,286 QSOs. The DXCC system was malfunctioning last Tuesday and Wednesday. ATS was informed of the problem and with help from Andy and Don, the problem was resolved by Thursday. QSL Bureau QSL Service Status: Current. Cards mailed as of 07/06/03: 779,225. No cards were mailed this week. Heather Dzamba spent 6 hours conducting tours around HQ. Martin covered the morning bulletins & visitor operations at W1AW. Field & Educational Services French students on a Russian sailing vessel named Mir had a successful ARISS QSO. Kids at a Massachusetts Challenger Center enjoyed a terrestrial QSO with astronaut Barbara Morgan, KD5VNP. Rosalie assisted NASA in finalizing a revised lithograph on ARISS. She took part in a VRC telecon and commented on some of their draft reports. Regulatory Information John Hennessee assisted amateurs with local government zoning problems in Lancaster, PA (WB3BWF) and with a covenant restriction in Bullhead City, AZ (WA6KML). He updated the local government presentation page on our ARRL Web site with a new link to the affiliation between ARRL and the Citizens Corps, and linked stories on amateurs providing assistance in disasters within the last 6 months. He reports a number of last-minute questions on the 60-meter allocation and received favorable reports of amateur activity on that band. Field Organization/Public Service Team Leona Adams was in touch with recently-appointed SMs to help with the transitions and to ensure they have supplies and information to get started. She handled 25 Field appointments and their initial supplies along with a steady stream of SM expense reports. Steve Ewald learned from Louisiana Section officials that hams were on standby after Tropical Storm Bill came ashore bringing much rain and flooding. SMs talked up Field Day (promotional reports beforehand, summary reports after), and several kept the tradition of visiting as many of their Section Field Day sites as possible. Almost all Sections have seen activity via their electronic Section News and/or ARRL Web pages during June; only four Sections were quiet: Alaska, Los Angeles, Orange and Utah. Rosalie has named Bill Weatherford, KM5FT, as New Mexico SM to fulfill the remaining 6 months of Joe Knight's term; Joe stepped down because of his health. Chuck Skolaut received some reports on "opening night" activity on 60-meters. One OOC who was monitoring says that operations were going along pretty well. Chuck logged several reports about a possible intruder on 14317 kHz; much of this may be computer-related interference. Volunteer monitors also found a potential intruding signal at 14000 kHz. C-CE Howard Robins reports continuing progress by authors on lesson units for the future the RF Propagation course and the Antennas 101 course. He sent 848 emails to Certified Examiners and Certified Instructors in order to purge the data in our administration system. A by-product was finding some membership lapses. Howard invited them to renew because CEs and CIs must be members. His contact with the volunteers seemed to mean a lot to some of them, so he is looking at future periodic email for them. Jerry Ellis is continuing work on the field exam and class paper files. He matched mentor certificates with stipend checks to be mailed. He processed results from field exam sessions received recently. CNCS, UTC, and field exam grads were mailed their printed certificates, ID cards and refund checks (where appropriate). Amateur Radio Education & Technology Program Mark Spencer worked on refining the curriculum and correlating items to the National Education Standards for science. He will do the same for the math, language arts and social studies standards. He met with Mary Hobart about what statistics we should collect for use in finding funding for The Big Project. EmComm Grants Dan prepared materials for the upcoming ARECC Seminar at the Southeastern Division convention in Gainesville, GA. CNCS-sponsored emcomm course graduates total 1573. UTC-sponsored emcomm course stats follow: Class Registrations Grads Level I 216 7 Level II 364 200 Level III 244 107 73, Sincerely, Mark Wilson, K1RO Chief Operating Officer MW: lk Staff Absentee List Dave Sumner 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Mark Wilson 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Barry Shelley 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Mary Hobart 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting/Development Session Lisa Kustosik 7/17-7/19 BOD Meeting Rosalie White 7/18-7/19 BOD Meeting Wayne Mills 7/18-7/19 BOD Meeting Jennifer Hagy 7/7-7/14 Vacation `` 7/21-7/22 Vacation Kristy Perillo 7/7-7/18 Vacation Dan Miller 7/10-7/13 SE Div Convention, Gainesville, GA `` 7/14-7/16 Vacation `` 7/25-7/27 Ft. Tuthill, AZ Hamfest `` 7/28-7/30 Vacation Brennan Price 7/7-7/11 Vacation Howard Robins 7/9 Vacation Perry Williams 7/1-7/22 Vacation Steve Ewald 7/24 Vacation Joel Kleinman 7/25 Vacation