Greetings, welcome to "Dale's Tales" for March, 2021.
SPECIAL ADVANCE ANNOUNCEMENT: The plans are approved for a GREAT LAKES DIVISION ARRL CONVENTION this year. DX Engineering will be hosting the event at their facility in Tallmadge, OH on August 7 in conjunction with their DXE Hamfest. Plans for special meetings and forums will be announced as soon as those events are confirmed. Save the date!
SCHOOL ROUNDUP: The recent School Club Roundup looked like a real roundup for school clubs in the Great Lakes Division.
In the Middle/Intermediate/JR High contest category, the winner was K8LPS, the Columbiana Clippers Amateur Radio Club in Ohio. In the Sr. High category, the Dixie Heights HS in Kentucky, K4YDH brought home third place and the College/University category, and W8EDU from Case Western Reserve in Ohio, brought home the third-place position in that category. Our most sincere congratulations go out to all. It is really neat to see a renewal of activity in school and college clubs and so many heavy hitters in the Great Lakes Division.
CONTEST COMMITTEE: I am pleased to report to you that the Great Lakes Division's vacancy on the Contest Advisory Committee was recently filled by President Rick Roderick K5UR who appointed John Comella N8AA of Fairfield, OH to serve as our representative in handling contest-related matters.
APPOINTMENTS: Vice Director Scott Yonally N8SY and I received Board appointments on ARRL Standing Committees for the coming year. The Board re-elected me to the Executive Committee and I was appointed to serve on the HF Band Planning Committee. I will also be assisting with the newly created Investment Management Committee. Scott highlights his appointments in "Scott's Stuff" below. At times it does not seem like much but some of these committees meet weekly. Combining that with the many radio club Zoom meetings that each of us currently attend, the weeks do get rather busy. We all hope to be back very soon with regular in-person sessions.
SCOTT'S STUFF: Comments from your ARRL Vice Director Scott, N8SY.
Wow, February has been cold and miserable out, but I have been so busy with meetings that I have hardly had time to notice it much. As many of you have read in the Board Meeting Minutes, I was assigned as the Board Liaison to the Public Relations Committee. We have been busy with several new projects that you will be hearing more about in the coming months. I was also asked to be a part of a special working group that the CEO, David Minster has put together, it is the Field Organization Working Group. Our primary objective is to document “best practices” for the Field Organization, helping create new tools and ideas for Section Managers and their staff. We have already had several meetings and we have got some great ideas in the works. More on that as time goes on.
Ok, let’s switch gears... I had a dilly of a computer problem recently and if it were not for the fact that I have backups of all my files, I would be starting over, literally from scratch trying to recreate everything that is stored on my computer. This mess all started when I got a message from Microsoft that my Windows 10 had an update ready to install and it wanted me to reboot the computer to start the process. I discovered a while back ago that you never let Windows just update your computer automatically. You can lose everything without even knowing what happened that way. I got everything ready and I went ahead and rebooted the computer and that is when all the fun started. It stalled and rebooted a half dozen times and then finally the dreaded “BLUE” screen appeared. I tried several times to get the computer to reboot thinking it would clear itself, but to no avail.
Luckily most newer computers have a recovery system built into the hard drive just for these types of situations. Unfortunately to get this feature to work you usually need to wipe a large part of the “C”
drive clean. The “C” drive is also where your personal files are usually stored. This means that all your personal files are gone, permanently, unless you have backed them up somewhere else. Since I have all my files stored on a portable drive as well as in the clouds, I did not lose a thing. Oh, I did have to go back and re-install all my programs which is a pain, but that is just a minor pain compared to what life would be like without all my files.
Please, if you have a computer and what you have stored on it is important to you, make sure that you do backups on a regular basis.
Portable hard drives are very dependable and cheap now days. You can buy a 4-terabyte portable drive for less than $90. That is more storage space than most folks can use in a lifetime. Think of just how many pictures, music, or special emails that you may never get back if you did not have a backup of them.
That is going to do it from here. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we all get together at the DX Engineering / Great Lakes Convention in August!
--73, Scott Yonally N8SY, Vice Director, Great Lakes Division
HAMFESTING: As you can see from the growth on the Hamfest Schedule, clubs are making their best efforts to return their hamfests to the calendar. Several early-in-the-year swaps have been postponed, but some clubs are adjusting their timetables and setting their hamfests up with different configurations and planning them for dates later in the season.
For the latest detail on regional hamfests, check the ARRL web page at:
http://www.arrl.org/hamfests-and-conventions-calendar. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE STILL HAVE SEVERAL CANCELLATIONS ON THE SCHEDULE.
Here is the current listing of Great Lakes Division ARRL Sanctioned hamfests for 2021. Please note that all are subject to change, so please stay current by checking the sponsoring club's web page before making your travel arrangements.
On the 2021 Great Lakes Div. ARRL Sanctioned Hamfest calendar:
03/06/2021 - Cave City Hamfest, Cave City, KY -- CANCELED
03/07/2021 - WINTERHAMFEST, Elyria, OH -- CANCELED
04/25/2021 - Athens Hamfest, Athens, OH -- POSTPONED
05/21/2021 - Dayton Hamvention, Xenia, OH -- CANCELED
06/05/2021 - Fulton County, Wauseon, OH
06/12/2021 - Luce Co Yooper Hamfest, Newberry, MI
06/20/2021 - Monroe Hamfest, Monroe, MI
07/10/2021 - Mansfield Mid Summer Trunkfest, Mansfield, OH
07/18/2021 - Van Wert Hamfest, Van Wert, OH
08/07/2021 - DX Engineering Hamfest & Great Lakes Div Convention, Tallmadge, OH
08/28/2021 - Cincinnati Hamfest, Cincinnati, OH
09/11/2021 - Greater Louisville, Shepherdsville, KY
09/18/2021 - Cadillac Hamfest, Cadillac, MI
09/18/2021 - Richmond Hamfest, Richmond, KY
09/19/2021 - Adrian Hamfest, Adrian, MI
09/26/2021 - Cleveland Hamfest, Berea, OH
12/04/2021 - Fulton Co Winterfest, Delta, OH
12/05/2021 - L'anse Creuse Swap, Madison Hgts, MI
If you club plans to request ARRL Hamfest Sanctioning, they should do so well in advance of the planned Hamfest date, as this allows adequate time for QST Listings. QST announcements require a 3-month lead time.
If a swap is cancelled or the date is going to change, please notify ARRL HQ. We work together with the HQ staff to verify all new date selections in the hope of mitigating date conflicts.
Be sure to invite your ARRL Officials as soon as your date is set. Things do require some advanced planning, especially under the current travel restrictions.
It should be noted that there has been a change in the way ARRL contributes to your ARRL sanctioned hamfest efforts. Please carefully read the e-mail from ARRL Headquarters confirming your sanctioning as IT CONTAINS IMPORTANT DETAILS REGARDING PRIZES.
73, Stay safe.
Light up those bands!
Dale Williams WA8EFK
Director
Great Lakes Division
wa8efk@arrl.org
