IN-Newsletter Vol. 26, No. 44 November 5, 2003 Upcoming Meetings November 8th in Dallas, TX at 8:30am Volunteer Resources Committee November 9th in Dallas, TX at 8:30am Executive Committee November 21st in Newington, CT Division Election Ballot Counting Development The 2004 Spectrum Defense Fund calling for constant vigilance in defense of frequencies is in the mail. First responses were received October 31 and to date 52 contributions have been received totaling nearly $5,000. The goal of this campaign is $225,000 by December 31. The ARRL Diamond Club now numbers 882 donors, including new donors and 172 renewed donors. The renewal process continues monthly along with the new Diamond Club solicitation as part of the member renewal process. More than 500 Diamond Club participants are Life Members and virtually all Diamond Club donors are Extra, General or Advanced licensees. Work continues on the materials requested by the Citizen Corps office in Washington and on grant opportunities through Homeland Security. The Legacy Circle Letters are in house and will be mailed the week of Nov 17 to Board members, 30 Legacy Circle members, 200 prospects and 4500 prospects. Work continues on 2004 budgets and plans. Media Relations Jennifer wrote and distributed a news release covering ham radio's role during the California wildfires. We haven't received any media inquiries as of yet. With much of the press coverage focusing on the human tragedies associated with this disaster, Amateur Radio may not get any play until things begin to settle down. The effects of the recent solar flares on ham radio communications garnered some media attention. Senior Technical Editor Dean Straw, N6BV, did an interview with WHAM Radio in Rochester New York. At Jen's request, he also spoke with a producer from WYRS and WJRZ Radio in Manahawkin, New Jersey. Both Dean and the producer (N2JGZ) reported that the interview went well. Production/Editorial Rick Lindquist and Brennan Price prepared The ARRL Letter, Vol 22, No 43, and Brennan voiced ARRL Audio News, with voiceover assistance from Jennifer Hagy, N1TDY. Dave Hassler prepared three Web features and prepared three regular Web columns for posting. In addition, he completed his monthly "ARRL-in-Action" Web column for the Web. He aided ARRL Education and Technology Program Coordinator Mark Spencer by preparing copy for a solderless code practice oscillator project and contributed a news report for the Web. Joel Hallas prepared the January QST Product Review column. For the first time, we are encouraging bids for items that have appeared in the Product Review column. The equipment listed in December QST on the Web a www.arrl.org/prauctions. Thanks to Tom Hogerty for setting it up. Joel is also working on the January/February issue of NCJ. Sales & Marketing Publication sales efforts were center stage due to the debut of the new ARRL Handbook and ARRL Antenna Book. In addition to Barnes & Noble finally picking up Now You're Talking! (with a substantial October order of over $17,000), Ingram Publishing broke their previous ordering pattern in October, ordering over $50,000 in publications, primarily Handbooks and Antenna Books. Deb made telephone contact with the Buyer from Fry's Electronics in an effort to increase Fry's orders of our amateur titles. Fry's now has 27 store locations and plans on opening another four stores during the next several months. In addition, their Web storefront activity has increased and now ARRL titles are listed there as well. Her efforts will continue in the weeks to come. The Sales and Marketing team continue to pull together details to support a new ARRL membership recruitment initiative with ICOM. December QST will include advertising from ICOM that features the joint promotion, "Buy a new ICOM. Get $15 off an ARRL membership." Details will be posted at www.arrl.org/max. Participating ICOM dealers will sticker their inventory of new radios with a $15 ARRL membership voucher (gift from ICOM). The promotion is limited to brand new or lapsed (one year or longer) members. Our group has produced the "sticker" vouchers, acrylic membership brochure display-holders for the 46 participating stores, and associated artwork and printed information to support the program. Jon Bloom has produced the online membership application. A handful of publication mailings were started (and some completed) this week. 20,000 new publication catalogs are mailing to customers and members. Catalogs have been mailed to dealers and storefronts. A special upgrade promotion for the TravelPlus CD-ROM is being prepared. It will mail to approximately 2,000 previous-edition buyers. We recently completed a mailing of the Amateur Radio Today CD-ROM to advertisers and dealers. Many of these business leaders and hams contribute to the voice of Amateur Radio in their communities. They are encouraged to share the CD-ROM with their associates and customers. Some are already using the video to support speaking engagements at schools and local community groups. A handful of businesses have called simply to say "thanks" for the CD. The mailing prompted a representative from Radio City (an ARRL advertiser) to order a supply of the CDs to support some new ham promotion activities. A new products email solicitation was distributed to members on Tuesday. Among the items featured were the newly revised ARRL Technician Class Video Course (now on DVD, and shipping late-November or early-December), Building Wireless Community Networks (a new WiFi Book), the new 15-month Amateur Radio Calendar from CQ Communications, and the new editions of The ARRL Handbook and The ARRL Antenna Book. Membership Services Awards Branch WAS QSL Cards Checked 200 WAS Cert. (No QSLs-Replacement) 1 WAC QSL Cards Checked 60 WAC Certs. (90 QSLs F/C) 15 WAC End. (6 QSLs F/C) 1 5BWAC Cert. (30 QSLs F/C) 1 LTMA Inquiries 2 A-1 Op. Noms. 2 A-1 Op Certs. 5 VUCC Certs. Processed 8 Awards Mailed 72 Also, filing chores completed for 28 members' records. HF Awards Manager Appt.: Tom Stripling, WB5QLR, El Paso, TX. Processing Status: Current or up to three weeks. For the coming week-Basic WAS awards for October, U.S. WAC and VUCC awards, 5BWAS plaques, and complete the filing chores associated with the LTMAs issued earlier this year. Contest Branch We continue to handle a few problems with missing Field Day entries that were not received at the Contest Branch. Editing of the June VHF Web presentation continued. Work on the August UHF report continued. Mailing of certificates for the DX contest began and will continue this week. Data entry for September and 10 GHz contests is nearing completion. The robot was updated for the November-January contests and test messages are being sent through it. DXCC Branch For the week of: November 2, 2003 Beginning Cards 176,762 Cards Received 10,069 Cards Processed 16,441 Ending Cards 170,390 Applications Pending 1,485 Processing Time 6.8 Weeks Year-to-date (2003) Cards Received 562,471 Cards Returned 605,117 DXCC is currently mailing applications received on September 15, 2003. DXCC is currently entering cards received on September 19, 2003. QSL Bureau QSL Service Status: Current. Cards mailed as of 11/02/03: 1,141,825. No cards were mailed this week. W1AW Thanks to John Hennessee, N1KB and Ron Cady, K1RKD (of the Newington Amateur Radio League) for operating W1AW in the ARRL November CW Sweepstakes. They made 57 Sweepstakes QSOs on 20 meters and some non-contest QSOs on other bands. 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. Joe created the texts for the November W1AW Qualifying Runs. He also upgraded the PC in Studio One used for SSTV/logging to a faster machine. He's in the process now of locating Windows-based software to assist with the frame capture for SSTV photos. (The old system was DOS-based, and would not run properly under Windows.) W1AW Telephone Sales year to date (2003): $28,948. Field & Educational Services A second successful ARISS school QSO (with a Spanish school) was completed by ESA astronaut Pedro Duque who is visiting the Expedition 8 ISS crew. This new crew is just getting settled aboard ISS. Rosalie finalized items for the Michigan State Convention and she worked with Mary Hobart on new documents requested by Citizen Corps. Field & Education Support Team Gail Iannone sent 15 convention applications to the Executive Committee for their approval at the November 9 meeting. She also sent 9 hamfest approval letters and 3 convention approval letters to the sponsoring committees confirming the Division Director's approval of the events to be "ARRL-sanctioned" and processed 4 door prize orders. Margie Bourgoin prepared affiliation applications for 9 clubs for consideration the EC meeting November 9. She also processed 3 SSC renewals. Margie worked with Jon Bloom and John Proctor to fix a problem with the club listings on ARRLWeb page Friday morning. She also sent a reminder to all clubs by email to submit a JOTA survey if they participated. Jean Wolfgang has received 64 JOTA survey/logs. To date we have recorded 3,546 scouts, 681 visitors and 266 hams have participated in JOTA 2003. Jean has also assisted in gathering comments on the Harmonics youth page, fielding ARISS questions and accepting applications for future contact. Linda Mullally updated 44 clubs with 2 reactivations and registered 13 Instructors. Linda continued work on the Instructor Online Primer, with the addition of graphics elements and some text revisions. Linda assisted Jerry Ellis with checks and certificates mailing. Mary Lau sent updates to the scholarship database of Polk Community College, Winter Haven, FL and researched items for the upcoming VRC meeting. Mary also completed the January "At the Foundation" column and mailed out contribution acknowledgments. Regulatory Information John Hennessee made updates/rewrites to the following regulatory Web pages at http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/index.html: Application Filing FAQ, License Renewal/Changes (including updated Washington Mailbox Q&A on the same), zoning presentation material, Additional Information and a section on recent FCC actions affecting the Amateur Service. John also assisted an amateur with a covenant restriction in Kingman, AZ (KC7NVM) and with a local government zoning problem in Riverside County (Wildomere), CA (W6HIQ). Field Organization/Public Service Team ARES teams and other Amateur Radio operators in southern California are assisting served agencies with communications as they fight destructive wildfires in Southern California. Steve Ewald, Rick Lindquist and Jennifer Hagy have been keeping in touch with Section Leaders in San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange about the latest news on Ham Radio's response. An October 31 report from the Fire Safe Council (of California) that appeared on the PR Newswire acknowledged Amateur Radio's involvement: "In San Diego County, Lowell Grimaud of the county's Fire Safe Council cited the decision to select Palomar Observatory as a staging area and shelter, and planning for the use of local ham radio operators as an information source. 'Thanks to the Palomar Amateur Radio Club, we had around-the-clock information during the fires,' Grimaud said." Leona Adams reports that Kevin Bogan, AH6QO, has been nominated for the Pacific Section Manager position, and incumbent Carl Clements, W4CAC, has been nominated as SM for Virginia. Petitions are due at HQ on December 5 for SM terms beginning in April 2004. Ballots for the Tennessee and Kansas elections are still coming in, and they are due at HQ on November 14. With the help of Chuck Skolaut and the South Texas Section Official Observers, a "ditter" signal on 14.024.8 MHz was identified by direction-finding techniques and the problem was resolved. Chuck helped gather news about this for the ARRL News Page. Chuck also has been collecting and processing taped documentation of possible rule violations on HF and 2 meters. Over the last couple of weeks, 18 different Sections sent out 28 e-mail newsletter/messages via the SM Web Page e-mail relay service. EmComm Grants Dan reports some interesting statistics gleaned from his seminar at Hamfest MN. Surveys from 24 of the 25 attendees were returned. By license class, those present were: Novice-1, Tech-6, General-2, Advanced-1, Extra-8. Six were VEs. 83% were ARRL members. Field appointments: SM-1, SEC-1, DEC-1, EC-3, STM-1, ASM-1, AEC-1, OO-1, and OOC-1. Of those who submitted this information, the average number of volunteer hours spent per month in EmComm related activities showed 13.7. Comments were all favorable and suggestions for improvements are being implemented in the next seminar which is planned for Ft. Wayne on Nov. 14. Amateur Radio Education and Technology Project The recommendations for the next round of Project grants were finalized and sent to the Executive Committee for consideration. There were 8 Project Grant and 2 Progress Grant applications forwarded with approval recommendations. The Activity Board circuit board design was finalized and submitted to the manufacturer for fabrication. Mark had an excellent contact with a Project school outside of Atlanta and spoke with all of the kids in the program on 20 meters. He will be hand delivering QSL cards to the kids on Friday when he visits the school. 73, Sincerely, Mark Wilson, K1RO Chief Operating Officer MW:lk Staff Absentee List All Staff 11/27-11/28 Holiday Dennis Motschenbacher 11/6-11/7 Sales call, training seminar Rick Lindquist 10/30-11/7 Vacation Margie Bourgoin 11/14 ARRL Louisiana State Convention Zoe Belliveau 11/7 Vacation `` 12/29-12/31 Vacation Danny Sayad 11/7 Vacation Kathy Capodicasa 12/2 Jury Duty Mark Dzamba 12/1-12/5 Vacation Pam Dzamba 12/1-12/5 Vacation Lisa Tardette 12/29-12/31 Vacation Dan Henderson 11/7 Myrtle Beach Convention Joel Kleinman 11/7 Vacation