IN-Newsletter Vol. 26, No. 46 November 19, 2003 Upcoming Meetings November 21st in Newington, CT Division Election Ballot Counting December 6th in Newington, CT at 8:30am A&F Committee Development The 2004 Spectrum Defense Fund has realized $57,118 from 1340 donors in its first 9 days of returns. The average contribution is $42.63, about $2 lower than last year. Development Associate Debra Johnson has put her newly honed skills in ACCESS to work to analyze the special BPL campaign. We will use the data from the reports on the BPL campaign and data from each campaign in 2004 to build the tools to make our campaign more efficient and productive. Thank you, Debra! A lot has been learned about what segments of the ARRL membership responded to the call for contributions against BPL... * The Circulation campaign that asked for members and contributions attracted 190 donations (3.4% of the total donations) representing $3,858. * Clubs responding to the special email solicitation total 172 representing $24,816 with a generous average contribution of $144. * Web contributions continue to increase. During this campaign 7% (392) contributions came from the Web representing $28,003 (9.3% of revenues). * Donors declining any thank you gift total 4,272 or 76.5% of all donors. This percentage is dramatically higher than previous Defense campaigns where the total declining gifts averaged 40%. * Not surprisingly 49.1% of contributions (2741) and 55.7% of revenues ($171,071) came from Extra class licensees. The ARRL Diamond Club renewal program continues to bear fruit. So far 190 Diamond Club donors have renewed/upgraded their support donating a total of $38,261 in unrestricted revenue. So far 23 donors have renewed or upgraded in the major donor categories of $250 a year or more. Production/Editorial Joel Hallas reports that the January QST "Product Review" column has been reviewed by manufacturers and in final production phase. "New Products" for January is also in production. One of two items for February product review is complete; the other is in the Lab with an on-air evaluation scheduled to start later this week. A follow-up "Technical Correspondence" item related to Joel's article on dc power systems has been submitted following some additional RFI research in the ARRL Lab and at home. Joel has received and answered about a dozen e-mails with application questions, so far. Joel has submitted an article on an approach to wideband and multiband antennas for possible QST or QEX use. Most of the January/February issue of NCJ has been turned in for typesetting and layout. The "Loaner/Field" digital camera has been received from Kodak following repair. It came back "under budget and ahead of schedule" and seems to work fine. If you need to borrow a digital camera to take photos for a League event, please see Joel Hallas. Rick Lindquist reports The ARRL Letter went out November 14 to 66,612 members. That's up by 1400 subscribers since the start of 2003. Rick wrote/edited stories on new HR 713 cosponsors, the ARISS November K6DUE special event, FCC commissioner Abernathy's BPL "clarification," the end of UO-14 for ham use, FCC interference cases enforcement, "In Brief" (17 items), and FCC enforcement letters, plus a few short items for the Web. Dave Hassler is preparing a QST article schedule for an upcoming issue. In addition, he drafted his QST column, "ARRL-in-Action," and edited several features for the ARRLWeb. He also provided Sales and Marketing staff with draft wording for a membership mailing. Bob Schetgen has submitted "The World Above 50 MHz," "Hints & Kinks" and "Technical Correspondence" columns for January QST and is preparing the January/February issue of QEX for typesetting and layout. Stu Cohen is reviewing page proofs of technical articles and columns for January QST and is preparing material for the February issue. Sales & Marketing Materials were shipped to ICOM dealers participating in the new joint ICOM/ARRL membership recruitment initiative. Thanks go to Janet Rocco and Steve Capodicasa for assembling and shipping the packages which included ARRL membership store displays and 10,000 $15 ARRL membership voucher (stickers to be affixed to cartons of new ICOM radios). See www.arrl.org/max for program details. Bob Inderbitzen continues to make headway as he updates the images and descriptions for ARRL products on commercial websites such as Amazon.com. Diane Szlachetka and Bob have started updating the information we provide advertisers about QST production specifications. Tom Hogerty made fast work of some of this material, posting changes online at http://www.arrl.org/ads/. A new "advertising specifications" web page has also been introduced at www.arrl.org/ads/specs. The days when advertisers mailed their ads as printed film to ARRL are long over. Today, nearly all of the effort of receiving and assembling advertising pages is handled electronically. We're confident that by communicating accurate production specifications to our customers that they too will realize increased benefits from employing the latest industry trends and tools. The Sales & Marketing team produced additional material supporting our 2004 planning. Holiday cards have been received back from the printer. Sue Fagan produced the design, based on the December QST cover (photography by David Pingree). The cards will be distributed by the Sales & Marketing and Development groups. Janet has placed orders to re-stock our inventories of a handful of non-ARRL products and publications. Among these is the new, 2004 Winter edition of the Radio Amateur Callbook on CD-ROM. It slices and dices! Well, not exactly. But it is a handy gadget for the homebrewer's toolbox! The ARRL L/C/F and Single-Layer Coil Winding Calculator is now available and shipping, www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=9123. Whether you are tinkering with filters, oscillators, impedance matching circuits or antenna coils and traps, you'll want to keep this "slide rule" style calculator close by for quick and easy circuit calculations. Thanks go to Mike Tracy for providing a detailed description of its uses. The item was actually offered by ARRL some 34-years ago! We're excited to offer it again, back by popular demand and for a limited time. Deb Jahnke met with Diane Szlachetka, Carol Patton and Joe Bottiglieri to finalize "materials due" dates and "reservation" dates for 2004 QST, QEX and NCJ. This will be distributed to advertisers shortly. Fulfillment staff is hoping to improve the holiday order taking process. Many holiday purchasers of ARRL products request orders and memberships be shipped to alternate addresses as well as a variety of other special shipping instructions. With the volume of orders received during the holiday season, special instructions can be confusing. Thanks to the ingenuity of several fulfillment staffers, special order forms have been put in place to take holiday phone orders. With these, we hope to lessen any confusion and required follow up necessary for orders. Membership Services Awards Branch WAS QSL Cards Checked 300 WAS Certs. (Replacements-No QSLs 2 WAS End. (50 QSLs ES/C) 1 WAC Cert. (6 QSLs ES/C) 1 Extra Class Certs. 20 LTMA Inquiries 3 OTCs 5 Friendship Awards 4 A-1 Op. Noms. 2 A-1 Op Certs. 1 VUCC Certs. Processed 11 VUCC Backfill App. 1 Grids 204 VUCC Initial Apps. 5 Grids 875 VUCC End. Apps. 4 Grids 253 Processing Status: Current or up to three weeks. For the coming week-WAC QSL card checking, Code Proficiency, RCC, and LTM awards, mail out the VUCC and foreign WAC awards, and finish the filing chores for the LTMAs issued earlier this year. Contest Branch Finalized the August UHF results for QST and the Web and edited the draft. Edited down to size the June VHF results for QST. Began data entry of SS CW logs. Continued printing and mailing of 2003 DX Contest certificates. DXCC Branch For the week of: November 16, 2003 Beginning Cards 161,986 Cards Received 6,106 Cards Processed 17,542 Ending Cards 150,550 Applications Pending 1,262 Processing Time 7.4 Weeks Year-to-date (2003) Cards Received 582,348 Cards Returned 644,954 DXCC is currently mailing applications received on September 25, 2003. DXCC is currently entering cards received on September 29, 2003. QSL Bureau QSL Service Status: Current. Cards mailed as of 11/16/03: 1,220,225. No cards were mailed this week. W1AW Special thanks to ARRL staffers John Hennessee, N1KB, Steve Ewald, WV1X, Mark Spencer, WA8SME, Chuck Skolaut, K0BOG, and Carole Dimock, N1NAM, also Delaware Section Manager Randall Carlson, WB0JJX and a number of Newington Amateur Radio League (NARL) club members for their operating W1AW in the 2003 ARRL November Phone Sweepstakes. They made 942 QSOs, with 76 sections, for a claimed score of 143,184. Andrew Toth of XX Towers Inc., (W1AW antenna contractor) was on hand Wednesday (11/12) to pull down the North tower rotator for repair. It was determined that the rotator motor is shorted. Joe Carcia has been in contact with M2 Antenna Systems (the source of the rotators) in the hopes of obtaining another rotator and repair of the current model. (The "repaired" rotator will eventually be used as a backup since there currently are no backup rotators on-hand that can be quickly installed.) Joe created the operating schedules for the 2004 W1AW/K6YR Qualifying Runs. He also made a repair to one of the rotator control consoles. He began installation of a donated Hewlett Packard Frequency Counter within the Harris transmitting racks. He also prepared the operating studios for the Sweepstakes activities. Scott worked on fast and slow code practice files for the month of November. He also handled some evening phone sales calls in the 5 PM to 8 PM time slot. W1AW Telephone Sales year to date (2003): $31,352. Field & Educational Services The ARISS Team completed hardware tests in Moscow, and is helping future ISS crewmember Mike Fincke get his ham license. Most Moscow trip expenses were covered by NASA; the rest was shared by ARRL and AMSAT. ESA (European Space Agency) released a news item about astronaut Andre Kuipers, including his future ARISS QSOs; ESA set up a Web site about it, too. In the next few months, Johnson Space Center's education office is doing talks on NASA programs (including ARISS) at 1 education conference, 3 museums, an aerospace academy and 4 schools. We received a report that RS0ISS packet QSOs were recently made. Rosalie worked on action items from the VRC meeting. Field Organization/Public Service Team An EC in Maine said the director of the local emergency management office has "warmed up to us [ARES group] due to our participation in a Haz-Mat conference, Homeland Security Weapons of Mass Destruction training, Incident Command Training as well as communication for the Chamber of Commerce Thanksgiving/Christmas Parade." He said the online emcomm course and Tech study guides are valuable tools in bringing new people into the hobby and giving them a proper start in emcomm work. Steve Ewald hosted visiting Delaware SM Randall Carlson, WB0JJX. WNY and Pacific Section SMs are keeping HQ in touch with the latest on BPL news in their Sections. Leona Adams prepared for the SM election ballot counting (Kansas and Tennessee Sections) that takes place on November 18. She made updates to the Field Organization database, and some 25 packages of supplies to new appointees were handled. Chuck Skolaut received reports and collected data on 2-meter repeater interference problems in California and Indiana. A technical problem on a repeater in STX was identified and resolved when amateurs contacted the machine's owner who shut down the repeater for repairs. ARRL's newest Volunteer Monitoring station is off to an enthusiastic start, contributing some detailed reports. Field & Education Support Team Margie Bourgoin sent club certificates and letters to all new clubs voted on by the EC at their Nov. 9th meeting. She finished tying up loose ends before her final work day here Thursday. Margie also finished final preparations for her travel to the ARRL Louisiana State Convention. Linda Mullally updated 34 club records with 3 reactivations. She registered 14 Volunteer Instructors and 1schoolteacher, and sent out 3 Exhibit Kits. She compiled stats for the Field Organization report in QST (PSHR-BPL-SEC-STM reports), and added information regarding ARRL Membership recruitment to the Online Instructor Primer. Gail Iannone wrote 19 hamfest and 4 convention announcements for January QST; sent 11 hamfest letters to the sponsoring committees confirming Division Director approval of the events as ARRL-sanctioned, processed 2 label requests and coordinated travel for Jennifer Hagy to be the HQ rep at the Mississippi State Convention on February 6-7and for Dan Henderson at the North Carolina State Convention on April 4. She sent 15 convention approval letters to the sponsoring committees confirming the Executive Committee's approval as ARRL-sanctioned events. Jean Wolfgang has located a 3-part PowerPoint slideshow for teaching the Radio Merit Badge and a 3-part workbook. She has obtained permission to add it to the scout page to assist hams in teaching this merit badge. She received another 15 JOTA surveys bringing the total scout participation to 5,618. Jean received one nomination for the International Humanitarian Award and one for the Microwave Innovation Award. Mary Lau prepared a check and mailed it for signatures to reimburse ARRL for State of Connecticut filing fees. She also forwarded a proposal to the Proposals Committee for a Michigan group seeking an emergency repeater grant, and updated the web database of NextStudent, Inc. Scholarship Research Service of Round Rock, TX. CCE Jerry Ellis prepared October Mentor stipends for mailing, recruited mentors for the November Level II class, process mentors for the Level l class and issued rosters. He printed certificates for graduates and for mentors. Amateur Radio Education & Technology Project Mark Spencer visited the Talcott Mt Science Center (CT) who gave him a Project Grant application; Mark shared our curriculum and other information with them. One of our Project schools returned equipment sent to them in 2002; they felt they couldn't meet obligations of our grant. Mark was aware of the school's problems. We will check out the equipment and give it to a new school. Mark worked on a lesson/activity on transistor basics that uses the Activity Board as a signal source. Regulatory Information John Hennessee prepared updates for several regulatory Web pages, and is working on a new reciprocal operating authority FAQ so that members can get quick information on this. He also assisted amateurs with local government zoning problems in Cliffwood Beach, NJ (N2SXC); Troy, MI (W8BYR); Santa Fe, NM (K6NOF) and Hubertus, WI (K9JAC). EmComm Grants Dan Miller's ARES/ARECC Seminar at Ft Wayne got a good crowd of 35. One traveled nearly 300 miles to attend. About 80% were ARRL members, 4% were Citizens Corps volunteers, and 23 respondents averaged about 13 hours per month participating in emcomm activities. Dan gave two forum talks at the convention -- one on EchoLink, including a demo via HT through the local simplex frequency set up for EchoLink, and one on emcomm. Dan and Rosalie suggested edits to an article Gordon West, WB6NOA, wrote on our emcomm training program for a future issue of CQ. 73, Sincerely, Mark Wilson, K1RO Chief Operating Officer MW:lk Staff Absentee List All Staff 11/27-11/28 Holiday All Staff 12/25-12/26 Holiday Dave Sumner 11/26 Vacation Mark Wilson 11/26 Vacation Jennifer Hagy 12/24 & 1/2 Vacation Lisa Kustosik 11/25-11/26 Vacation Mary Hobart 12/2-12/3 Citizen Corps Conference `` 12/24-12/26 Vacation Zoe Belliveau 12/29-12/31 Vacation Kathy Capodicasa 12/2 Jury Duty Mark Dzamba 12/1-12/5 Vacation Pam Dzamba 12/1-12/5 Vacation Lisa Tardette 12/24pm Vacation `` 12/29-1/2 Vacation Dan Miller 11/21-11/23 Salt Lake City Convention Jean Wolfgang 11/26 Vacation Cathy Stepina 12/23-12/24 Vacation Chuck Skolaut 11/24-11/26 Vacation Rosalie White 11/24-11/26 Vacation `` 12/3 Jury Duty Steve Ewald 12/1-12/8 Vacation Scott Gee 11/21 Vacation `` 12/5-12/8 Vacation `` 12/29 Vacation Bob Inderbitzen 12/4-12/5 Vacation Deb Jahnke 11/26 Vacation `` 12/24 Vacation `` 12/29-12/31 Vacation