<<072011.doc>> IN-Newsletter <<Microsoft Word Picture>> Vol. 34, No. 29 July 20, 2011 -- Covers the period July 10-16. Regulatory Information Reported by Dan Henderson, N1ND After coming back from a week of vacation (July 5-8) the week of July 11 was spent in preparation for the ARRL Board meeting July 15-16. Significant time was spent on Wednesday and Thursday in conversations with Board members on a variety of topics. The early portion of the week was spent in clearing email and telephone queries. As of July 17, over 1600 Field Day reports had been received via the b4h.net website. Numerous questions on categories, supporting documentation and other Field Day related issues were handled. We worked with the editorial staff and ARRL General Counsel on a story regarding the ReconRobotics order released by the FCC on July 13. As a member of the Awards Committee, we reviewed a series of items forwarded from the DX Advisory Committee. At the request of Em Comm Manager Mike Corey, W5MPC, a chapter for an upcoming publication was reviewed, with comments being provided. At the request of Laura Smith at the FCC, a list of stations was provided to the FCC. The list included all stations that had been asked by the ARRL to mitigate interference to the PAVE PAWS radar at Beale Air Force Base. The FCC will use this information as they address continuing problems with non-compliant stations. Initial information on tower zoning problems was provided to members in FL and CT. We reviewed proposed changes to MA state law regarding antenna restrictions. The proposal appears to be in line with PRB-1 requirements. Media & Public Relations Reported by Allen Pitts, W1AGP With the majority of video done and the final clips slowly dragging in, script writing for the 2011 DIY video is underway following the outline plans. Photos, video and sound bytes are also being collected for some new PSAs. Several late Field Day media hits came in, but July is already off to an unusually high start in media hits about other activities. With the passage of the new job descriptions for PIOs and PICs, the national PR Committee is now turning to updating the PIO handbook. Leo Laporte's TwiT show "Ham Nation" with Bob Heil continues to grow. Leo recently got licensed. They have new studios (with a functioning AR station) and an ARRL "Amateur Radio Communications" banner was provided to them as a backdrop to their set. Development Reported by Mary Hobart, K1MMH Responses to the Education & Technology campaign have started arriving. First responses came in July 12 and so far the campaign had generated 117 returns totaling $6,693. Copy is being written for the second issue of Spectrum Defense Matters. A second round of interviews for the new Individual Giving Manager has been completed. Preparations are underway for the August 11 meeting of the Second Century Campaign Committee at ARRL headquarters. Production/Editorial Reported by Joel Kleinman, N1BKE The September 2011 issue of QST was released to the printer July 20. Also released to the printer: Seventh Edition, 2nd printing of the General Class License Manual and the 2nd printing of Small Antennas for Small Spaces. Khrystyne Keane wrote and distributed the ARRL Letter and produced and voiced ARRL Audio News for July 14, 2011. Sales and Marketing Reported by Bob Inderbitzen, NQ1R A handful of membership solicitations are in the planning and design stages, for mailing in September. One of these will include a newly designed postcard being tested. A large tour group of 60 people is being planned for Friday, July 15. The visitors are from the 3905 Century Club, traveling to the area for their (annual) Eyeball 2011 gathering. In August, Deb Jahnke will help represent ARRL at an in-store event at Ham Radio Outlet in Salem, New Hampshire. We are supporting Deb with materials to help promote membership and benefits. A scheduled quarterly meeting with R.R. Donnelley, QST's printer, was attended by Amy Hurtado and Deb Jahnke. Topics included paper pricing, postal updates, service standards, cost saving ideas, and 2012 planning. The team has also started discussing the next printing contract. A new printing of the ARRL New Ham Quick Start Guide is underway. The guide, which is supported through advertising revenue, is included with membership solicitations sent to new licensees. It includes a mix of equipment advertising and ARRL editorial-tailored to new hams. A summer-themed publication promotion will mail next week. The mailing promotes new titles, license manuals, and some other flagships. Some multi-department planning is underway to support a marketing strategy for the introduction of the 2012 ARRL Handbook and the 22nd edition of The ARRL Antenna Book. These new editions will be introduced together, and begin shipping in October. New web pages summarizing the ARRL-sponsored affinity benefit programs have been completed by Katie Glass and Diane Petrilli: www.arrl.org/affinity-benefits (summary page), MetLife auto and home insurance www.arrl.org/metlife, Hays-administered ARRL Equipment Insurance Program www.arrl.org/insurance, and US Bank's ARRL Visa Credit Card www.arrl.org/visa. These programs also get attention at www.arrl.org/membership (same as www.arrl.org/benefits). Ross Brown, WA8DQH, who served as liaison to the ARRL for Hamvention 2011, has informed us that 2011 attendance was 22,331 (19,750 in 2010). This number includes exhibitor badges. Mike Kalter, W8CI, has been re-appointed General Chairman, serving for Hamvention 2012. Brown has accepted Kalter's invitation to serve as ARRL liaison again for 2012. We collaborated with staff from Awards and DXCC to establish an automatic phone distribution group for their team. Internally, calls routed to the new phone group are automatically distributed among the available Awards staff. The change will reduce bottlenecks from manually directing calls to available staff. The improvement includes a new voice announcement and on-hold message thanks to Allen Pitts and NT3V. Similar telephone programming has in place in the VEC and membership/sales groups for years. During the short week, the warehouse crew fulfilled 520 packages for publication and product orders, 416 membership premiums, and QST mailing supplements. Membership & Volunteer Programs Reported by Dave Patton, NN1N Field Organization/Public Service Team Bill Roberts, W5NPR, of Alpine, has been appointed as the Interim West Texas Section Manager as of July 8, 2011. ARRL Membership and Volunteer Programs Manager Dave Patton made the appointment in consultation with ARRL West Gulf Division Director David Woolweaver. Roberts has served as the ARRL West Texas Section Traffic Manager since 2009. Leona Adams and Steve Ewald have been in touch with Bill, W5NPR. John Dyer, AE5B, recently completed his latest term of office as the West Texas Section Manager on June 30. Dyer has served as the top Field Organization official in West Texas since July 2007; he previously served as Section Manager from October 2002-June 2005. Dyer decided not to run for a new term of office that began July 1, 2011. Roberts will serve as Interim West Texas Section Manager until a Section Manager is declared elected. As per the rules, the West Texas Section Managers' position is now being re-solicited since no one was nominated by the original March 4th petition-receipt deadline. Nominating petitions during this resolicitation period are due at Headquarters by September 9. The 18-month Section Manager's term of office in West Texas begins January 1, 2012. Dale Temple, W5RXU, the Arkansas Section Manager gave a good explanation of the OO program during a recent Section Net and a South Florida Official Observer reported receiving good feedback from the recipient of an advisory. An update was received regarding a station that had been banned from a repeater using it with a club call. Northern New Jersey OOs are checking out a report of bad language and poor operating practices on a local repeater and continued use of a Missouri repeater for business has been forwarded to the FCC. Section Managers and OOCs from South Carolina and Georgia are following up on repeater complaints. A SW broadcast station was reported on 7210, 18130 and 28260 kHz this past week. Chuck Skolaut compiled and forwarded the monthly Official Observer Summary to all OOs, OOCs, and Section Managers. The annual monitoring report was prepared for the IARU Monitoring System. Jorge del Valle, TG9ADV of Guatemala has been named the new IARU Region 2 Monitoring Coordinator. Good follow up by the Orange Section OOC and others has resulted in CODAR transmissions being moved outside of the 60 meter amateur band on channels 3 & 4 that had been heard for some time. Good cooperation between various authorities, operators and OO program participants made this possible. We encourage amateurs to enjoy all 5 channels on 60 meters. An OO from EPA reported continuous dits being heard on 18085, the appropriate people were alerted and we are awaiting updates. Education Services Reported by Debra Johnson, K1DMJ ARISS The NASA Teaching from Space (TFS) office has now received a total of more than 100 inquiries in response to the mid-May announcement about ARISS's new proposal system. The TFS office sent the announcement to additional educator groups, a few of which include the Solar System Ambassadors (a group at NASA JPL who speaks with educators every day), nationwide Science Engineering Math Aerospace Academies, President Obama's Summer of Innovation educators, and the Museum Alliance (science museums and observatories that support educational activities). Education & Technology Program Miguel Enriquez, KD7RPP and new recruit Tommy Gober, N5DUX led two successful TIs in June: one in Albuquerque NM with 13 participants, and another hosted by Parallax at their facility in Rocklin CA with 9 participants. We implemented an online evaluation for participants this year which allows us to collect more feedback with more consistency. We'll be accumulating that feedback for all sessions. Comments from the NM and CA TIs are very favorable, reflecting very strong instructional leadership from both Miguel and Tommy. We processed reimbursement applications for all participants and instructors for these first two sessions. Tommy represented Education Services at HamCom and had a chance to connect with ARISS AMSAT program leaders to discuss curriculum ideas to support the ARISSat launch as well as the ETP curriculum on satellite communications more generally. Nathan McCray, K9CPO finished the TI-2 equipment preps and delivered the equipment to Matt Severin, N8MS, who will be instructing the session. Nathan and Matt reviewed steps for the final equipment preparations together, which Matt will complete. Nathan also reviewed the grant applications submitted for round 2 of the 2010-2011 school year, and wrote recommendations for the ARRL Executive Committee. Six of the seven applications were recommended and approved by the EC. Some discussion of policy about awarding successive project grants arose which resulted in some additional expectations of the applicants being addressed in the Progress grant application. Nathan also completed the final preparations for the TIs that he will lead in Utica, NY and at headquarters which included rebuilding the Mars Rover and adding a new camera as well as making a tape measure antenna for a demo and adding an egg-beater antenna for the weather demo. Jennifer Knapp is completing the resource deployment for the July TI sessions. Continuing Education Program We reviewed and assembled the content for the Intro to EmComm course for print production and provided those files to the Production Dept. We continue to work with IT and Customer Service on issues that cause problems for students trying to sign onto the online course platform or trying to access student history information. These problems are a result of clients/members who have multiple records in our databases or establish multiple usernames/accounts on our website. Dennis Budd is also completing a few more parts of the web user interface needed to support field instruction and exams of the Intro to Emcomm course. The Find a Field Instructor <http://www.arrl.org/find-a-fi> and Find a Field Examiner <http://www.arrl.org/find-a-fe> sites were activated. The field class and exam registration tool is yet to be implemented. Jennifer Knapp is managing a flood of inquiries and applications about field instruction and mentoring the new emcomm course. Sincerely Compiled by, Lisa Kustosik, KA1UFZ Assistant to the CEO Hamfest/Member Contact/ARRL Representative/Meetings/Vacations Leona Adams 7/22 Vacation Margie Bourgoin 7/22 Vacation `` 8/18-8/23 Vacation Hugh Brower 8/15-8/19 Vacation Joe Carcia 7/22 Vacation `` 7/29 Vacation `` 8/5-8/12 Vacation `` 8/19 Vacation Steve Ford 8/8-8/12 Vacation `` 8/18-8/25 West Virginia State Convention, Weston, WV/Vacation Mike Gruber 8/20-8/27 Vacation Joel Hallas 8/10pm-8/16 Vacation Ed Hare 8/5-8/7 Midwest Division Convention, Cedar Rapids, IA Dan Henderson 8/5-8/7 Rocky Mountain Division Convention, Taos, NM Bob Inderbitzen 7/25-7/29 Vacation `` 8/8-8/12 Vacation Joel Kleinman 8/2 Vacation `` 8/5 Vacation Bill Moore 8/20-8/21 Alabama State Convention, Huntsville, AL Dave Patton 7/22-7/25 W0DXCC, Leavenworth, KS/Vacation `` 8/25-8/28 JARL Ham Fair, Tokyo, Japan Diane Petrilli 7/22 Vacation `` 7/29 Vacation `` 8/5-8/12 Vacation `` 8/26-9/2 Vacation Allen Pitts 7/20-7/22 Vacation `` 7/28-7/29 Vacation Brennan Price 8/5-8/6 Texas State Convention, Austin, TX Becky Schoenfeld 8/15-8/20 Vacation Chuck Skolaut 8/20-8/22 Kansas State Convention, Salina, KS