I have an attached copy and a printed copy for your convenience. <<050907.doc>> IN-Newsletter <<Microsoft Word Picture>> Vol. 30, No. 19 May 9, 2007 -- Covers the period April 29-May 5. Upcoming Meetings and Events IARU Administrative Council Meeting May 14-15 in Boston, MA IARU Administrative Council Visit May 16 in Newington, CT Dayton Hamvention May 18-20 in Dayton, OH Administration & Finance Committee July 19 in Newington, CT Second Board Meeting July 20-21, 2007 in Windsor, CT Regulatory Information Reported by Dan Henderson, N1ND Questions on Pave Paws continue to be handled. We hope to be able to do a follow-up story on the web the week of May 7th. We also received reports from more repeater owners that they were in the process of voluntarily reducing their power levels to 5 W TPO as a first step. Time was spent during the week on PowerPoint presentations for several upcoming conventions. We also met with Katie Breen and Maria Somma on preparing our forum for Dayton Hamvention. Dan was out of the office late in the week to attend the SC Section convention. He also spoke at a monthly meeting of the Western Carolina Amateur Radio Society in Asheville, NC while on the trip. Production/Editorial Reported by Joel Kleinman, N1BKE Rick Lindquist reports The ARRL Letter, Vol. 26, No. 18, distributed to 66,198 members on May 4. Rick prepared/edited news stories on the now-ended Scarborough Reef DXpedition, the FCC's "smart radio" order, four Amateur Radio on the International Space Station school group contacts, FCC enforcement and several news briefs and announcements. He also began work on his final "Happenings" column, for July QST. Rick voiced, edited and produced ARRL Audio News for May 4. Business Services Reported by Deb Jahnke, K1DAJ Despite all solicitation efforts, we are facing a challenging time with advertising for the July 2007 issue of QST. After many years holding an up-front position in the magazine, Kenwood has tentatively decided to relinquish that spot. Deb Jahnke will meet with the head of Kenwood's Amateur Division in Ohio. In addition, several other advertisers have temporarily decided to cut back on this particular issue. The single reason cited, is that they cannot keep up with the number of orders they have received (as improbable as that sounds for a reason). On the opposite side of the equation are several advertisers who must catch up on past invoices before continuing to advertise. A number of meetings at Dayton with potential advertisers are planned. Wholesale book sales with Ingram Publishing have been sluggish for the past several years. We have established new guidelines with Ingram to allow an additional percent discount if specific quantity levels are met. We have already received their first order after this negotiation and it is substantially larger than in the recent past. We obviously hope to reinvigorate our business relationship and this is a good first step. Membership & Volunteer Programs Reported by Dave Patton, NN1N Contest Branch Work continues to prepare the results columns for the 2006 10-Meter, 2006 RTTY Roundup and 2007 January VHF Contests. The Sweepstakes cups arrived back at headquarters on Thursday afternoon; this time in their mailers. Carol Michaud spent all day Friday completing the orders for mailing. QSL Branch There is no delay in opening mail and a 5 day delay in slotting of cards. This week, 132 pounds of cards were received from members. W1AW Thanks to the Candlewood ARA for their operating W1AW in the 2007 New England QSO Party. They made 80 QSOs, with 35 multipliers on 40 and 20 meters, for an initial claimed score of 2,800. Scott worked on fast and slow code practice files for the first half of the month of May. He also assisted the DXCC department with checking 110 (database-inputted) cards against DXCC applications. Scott also hosted the Candlewood ARA members. Joe spent two days training Tom Hogerty on how to run the morning code practices at W1AW and setting up for visitors operations. Joe, with help from Greg (and some assistance from Mike Tracy) got the legs of the North tower 80-meter dipole up in the trees. This antenna is cut for the lower portion of 80-meters, but will work (with a tuner) in the upper part of 80. It's now available for visitor use (or bulletin use if necessary). Joe completed some work on the 160-meter dipole as well. He also isolated the cooling fans (used on the Icom broadcast transmitters) from the radios. Pulling power from the radios to operate the cooling fans introduced some "fan noise" in the transmitted signals. Power to these fans now comes direct from the 12 VDC power supplies. Field Organization/Public Service Team The New Hampshire Section Manager election continues during the first half of May, and ballots are due at Headquarters by Friday, May 18. Ballots will be counted on May 22. Leona Adams prepared the SM nomination solicitation for July QST. She entered 38 new Field Organization appointments and sent out information supply packages. Chuck Skolaut compiled and forwarded the monthly ARRL Monitoring System/Intruder Watch report to the IARU Region 2 coordinator. Interference reported in Nebraska to a 2 meter repeater was found to be originating from a VHF base station used for train dispatching which had a spur on the 2 meter band. After being informed, the railroad technician was able to resolve the problem. Several other repeater interference problems continue to be monitored by Official Observers. Operators continue to report the music jammer on 18.160 MHz including one from a Norway who said he checked on it after reading about it on the ARRL Web's News page. The Section Emergency Coordinator's Yahoo! Discussion group has been active with discussions about the status of RACES and how well RACES has been relating or working with ARES in their specific states and sections. Steve Ewald has been working on July QST's Public Service column. Web/Software Development Reported by Jon Bloom, KE3Z April Web stats: 8.3 million page views, 278,000 per day 408,000 unique visitors Top pages: News, F & ES, Contests, TIS, W1AW, Members-Only page, FCC, VEC, Catalog Most popular searches: From outside: ARRL, ARES, Ham Radio, QST, LOTW, Morse Code, AARL, DXCC From our site: Band Plan, DXCC, Field Day, ARES, LOTW, Antenna, Nets, APRS Hugh Brower has been working on an ExamWin distribution that includes the new General pool. Both English and Spanish (by ex-SM Victor Madera, KP4PQ) versions are in the works. The new LoTW server is ready for use. Jon Bloom just needs to schedule a period of about 36 hours of LoTW downtime to migrate the current database to the new server. Jon modified our bulk e-mail sending system to allow capture of bounce messages for a project of Debra Johnson's Education Services department. He also completed arrangements with FedEx to use their Ship Manager Direct on-line service to get shipping quotes, moving from the FedEx test system to their "live" system. Micah Murray continues to be the principal maintainer of Web site page material and is also working on the final issues for the new membership application system. Sincerely Compiled by, Lisa Kustosik, KA1UFZ Assistant to the CEO Staff Absentee List All Staff 5/28 Holiday Kathy Allison 5/24-5/29 Vacation Margie Bourgoin 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention `` 6/1-6/5 Vacation Steve Capodicasa 5/7-5/11 Vacation Joe Carcia 5/25 Vacation `` 6/28-7/6 Vacation `` 7/13 Vacation `` 7/20 Vacation `` 7/27 Vacation Steve Ford 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention `` 5/21-5/23 Vacation `` 6/13-6/15 SNAP Publishing Conference, Washington, DC Scott Gee 5/17-5/18 Vacation Mike Gruber 6/4-6/8 Vacation Joel Hallas 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention Ed Hare 5/16-5/20 Dayton Hamvention `` 5/21-5/22 National Spectrum Managers Association, Arlington, VA `` 7/8-7/13 EMC Society Symposium Committee Meeting, Honolulu, HI Dan Henderson 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention `` 6/1-6/3 Georgia State Convention, Marietta, GA `` 8/16-8/28 ARRL National Convention, Huntsville, AL/Vacation Mary Hobart 5/16-5/20 Dayton Hamvention `` 6/1-6/4 Northwestern Division Convention, Seaside, OR Khrystyne Keane 5/17-5/18 Vacation Joel Kleinman 5/10 Vacation `` 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention Zak Lau 6/21-6/22 Vacation Rick Lindquist 5/18-5/20 Delaware Section Convention, Georgetown, DE `` 5/21 Vacation Bill Moore 5/17-5/20 Dayton Hamvention `` 6/8-6/10 West Gulf Convention, Plano, TX Dave Patton 5/17-5/21 Dayton Hamvention `` 6/19-6/25 Friedrichshafen Germany Convention Chuck Skolaut 5/14-5/21 Vacation Dean Straw 5/16-5/20 Contest University/Dayton Hamvention Dave Sumner 5/14-5/15 IARU Administrative Council Meeting, Boston, MA `` 5/17-5/18 Dayton Hamvention `` 5/21 Vacation `` 6/10-6/25 ITU-R WP8A Geneva, and Friedrichshafen Germany Mike Tracy 5/23-5/30 Vacation Larry Wolfgang 5/24-5/25 Vacation `` 5/31-6/1 Vacation