Greetings everyone, welcome to "Dale's Tales"
for September 2015.
SPECIAL EVENT:
September 12 is the date for the Greater Louisville Hamfest. See http://louisvillehamfest.com/ for
complete details. The Hamfest will be hosting the Kentucky State Leadership
Conference with nine forums on the schedule.
KY Section Manager Alan Morgan KY1O will kick things off with an update
on Visions and Goals for the Kentucky Section.
Forums include the KY EOC, Red Cross interfacing, Training goals, Search
and Rescue, KY NTS activities, working with health care alliances and ARES
Leadership. Your Vice Director Tom
Delaney W8WTD and I will be there to meet with attendees and participate in the
ARRL forum activities.
CONVENTION FINAL: My personal thanks go to everyone who
worked so hard to make the 2015 Great Lakes Division Convention a successful
event. The attendance exceeded expectations. The forums got rave reviews. The Wouff Hong ceremony welcomed 45 "novices"
into "The Order". Our Keynote
Speaker Debra Johnson K1DMJ provided us with insight towards getting school
students interested in Amateur Radio and the steps necessary to promote school
ham clubs.
On the Division Level, the Great Lakes Division's DX
Achievement Award was presented to Jay Slough, K4ZLE for his outstanding
service to the DX community.
Of course the Section Managers presented several awards
to deserving amateurs and clubs.
For Club Newsletters, in Ohio, the 1st Place winner is the DELARA NEWS. 2nd Place winner is The
TM&K. For 3rd Place, a three way tie occurred and the winners are The MVARA
Voice Coil, the Mount Vernon, Radio Club and the PCARS Radiogram.
The Michigan newsletter contest first place award went to
the Blossomland ARA Rusty Key and second place went to the Michigan QRP Club’s
5 Watter.
After selection and awards are presented by the
individual Section judges, these winners compete for the Division's Newsletter
contest award. The winner of the 7th
Great Lakes Division Newsletter Contest was the DELARA News from the Delaware
ARA Club in Ohio. Stan Broadway, N8BHL
is the editor.
Ohio's Allan Severson Memorial Award was presented to Bob
Dixon, W8ERD.
Michigan's ARRL Service to Scouting award went to Frank
Maynard, NF8M for his many years of service to the scouts of Michigan.
The Michigan Ham of the Year Award was presented to Ed
Hude, WA8QJE for his many years of tireless effort to get a Michigan PRB-1 bill
passed into Michigan law.
Our congratulations to all of these winners and our
special thanks to the Voice of Aladdin Amateur Radio Club for hosting a very
successful Convention.
A NOTE OF THANKS:
To Jim Bridgewater, District Director of the Detroit FCC office, who,
despite its unfortunate future, worked with his staff and local hams, tracked
down and took action against two regional amateurs who had been creating
deliberate interference and failing to properly identify their stations. We all have been concerned about the FCC's
cuts and the potential impact upon the Amateur Radio Service. It is good to note that the Commission still
remains vigilant and concerned about the scofflaws and miscreants that
occasionally appear to the detriment of all of us. Thanks Jim, and best wishes to you and your
staff from the entire Amateur Radio Community.
COMMENTS: from our
Vice Director, Tom W8WTD There is a new round of hamfests coming up for the
fall. I plan to be at Greater
Louisville, Findlay, Cincinnati (OKYIN), and Vette City. And maybe some
others. It's a good time to meet people,
and talk ham radio issues. I'm always
glad to find out what's on your mind, so come up and say hello if you see me at
your hamfest. There are also some club
meetings on my agenda for the fall.
Having participated in the communications for one bike
ride here in SW Ohio, I am reminded of the good work we hams do all across the
country.
There are bike
tours, walks, runs, car rallies, all sorts of events where our participation as
safety communicators is so helpful.
Every weekend of the summer there's some sort of activity on a repeater
nearby. These are the kind of things
that make us valuable assets to our communities. If you didn't take part in an event this
summer, maybe you'll have time to help out next summer!
It's almost time for the Boy Scout Jamboree on the Air,
coming up in October. I know some clubs
have expressed interest in helping. I
haven't worked it in a long time, but had great fun with the Cub Scout troop
that my sons were in, many years ago. I
encourage those of you who can to participate.
Some advice from the education coordinator, Debra Johnston, at ARRL HQ
--you never know what particular thing will interest a young person. So, to the extent that you can, be sure to
feature as many different aspects of the hobby as possible. Yes, make those contacts on HF. But can you demonstrate digital modes? Anyone listen to satellites? CW seems to interest the younger kids, around
the age of Cub Scouts. Remote control? Many middle-schoolers are into robotics. You don't need a whole display. Many of them can teach us something. But remote control of things? Maybe they haven't gone there with their
robotics work. Anyone in your club do
Fox Hunting?
The kids would love to try it. How about the Arduino boards? Maybe someone in the club has built something
using an Arduino. Bring it along and
show it off.
If you order now, you can get publicity flyers from
ARRL. I recommend the Youth flyer, 22
Things You Can Do with Ham Radio, as well as the Scouting and Amateur Radio
leaflet. So get your plans together,
contact a Scout group if they haven't already contacted you, and see what you
can do to promote ham radio to the Scouts.
You probably saw the ARRL news article about the FCC and
our interference here in the Cincinnati area.
Yes, that was me the ARRL quoted.
We had a team of us working on the problem. We're glad the interference is off the
air. It was pretty horrible to listen
to, and you never knew when it would pop up.
But we kept our cool, didn't acknowledge it on air, and did what we
could behind the scenes to track down the offender. Luckily, almost all hams are courteous and
friendly, and this type of thing is rare.
Finally, as Dale has noted, let's keep the letters, phone
calls, and e-mails going to convince Congress that we need the legislation to
extend PRB-1 to cover HOA's and CC&R's.
We have over 700,000 hams in this country. We should be able to make enough noise that
this non-partisan, common-sense bill can become law. The ARRL just issued a position paper titled
"Clarity on Amateur Radio Parity," which sets out our position pretty
clearly. (See www.arrl.org.)
Have you contacted your representatives yet?
73, until next month,
Tom W8WTD
AMATEUR RADIO PARITY ACT:
We are rapidly approaching 100 Co-sponsors for the "Amateur
We will be at both the Louisville and Findlay Hamfests to
generate letters encouraging your elected officials to support and co-sponsor
the Amateur Radio Parity Act. We are
equipped with custom software that will identify your Senator and
Congressperson and generate a letter to each.
We will print these letters, you can sign each and ARRL representatives
will hand deliver these letters to your elected officials. This personal contact and supporting
constituent letters have been extremely effective in our campaign for reaching
potential bill co-sponsors. The new ARRL
Web Page http://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-parity-act
contains the complete text of both the House and Senate bills.
It should be noted that there is some inaccurate and
misleading information that has been released by some representatives of
homeowners and community associations.
ARRL has published a statement to provided clarification to these
statements and cover, in simple
terms, what the bill will and will not do. For more details, please
see
CLUB PROGRAM OPPORTUNITIES: Your ARRL Director, Vice Director and Section
Managers are available to visit local radio clubs and give presentations about
ARRL and what is happening in your Section or Division. Please feel free to invite any of us for an
"ARRL Night" at your club.
Most of the talks are prepared in a video presentation format and can
include a Q&A session as well.
Advance scheduling really helps and gives you an opportunity to
publicize the event. See pages 15 &
16 of a recent QST for contact information.
HAMFESTING: As Tom
has mentioned, Hamfest Season is in full swing.
Here is the current Great Lakes Division ARRL Sanctioned
Hamfest Schedule for the next few weeks.
These swaps have received their sanctioning approval from ARRL HQ at the
time of this publication. I have noted
where Tom and I have commitments to attend.
Your Division and Section officials want to be at your
events and we strive for insuring that the ARRL is properly represented at
every ARRL Sanctioned Hamfest. It is
always a good idea for your hamfest chair to contact the Section Manager,
Vice-Director or Director early in the planning stages to invite them to attend
the activity. This will allow time to
prepare for alternate representation in the event of time conflicts.
Sept 12 - Greater Louisville / KY Leadership Conference -
Dale and Tom
Sept 13 - Findlay - Findlay, OH - Dale and Tom
Sept 19 - Richmond
- Richmond, KY - Tom
Sept 19 - GMARC Trunk Swap - Shelby Twp, MI
Sept 19 -
OHKYIN ARS Hamfest - Cincinnati, OH - Tom
Sept 20 - Adrian Hamfest - Adrian, MI
- Dale
Sept 27 - Cleveland Hamfest - Berea, OH - Dale and Tom
Oct 3 - ARRL
Executive Committee Meeting - Dale
Oct 3 -
GRAHamfest - Grand Rapids, MI
Oct 3 - Vette
City - Bowling Green, KY - Tom
Oct 10 - TBARC
Swap - Alpena, MI
Oct 17 - Muskegon
Color Tour Hamfest - Muskegon, MI
Oct 18
- Conneaut - Conneaut, OH
Oct 18 -
Kalamazoo Hamfest, Kalamazoo, MI
Oct 25
- Massillon - Massillon, OH
Oct 25 -
USECA - Madison Hgts, MI
Oct 31 - Hazard
- Hazard, KY
HAMFEST OFFICIALS:
When you receive your "Hamfest Package" from ARRL, please open
it immediately. Read it over and look at
all of the material you received. There
is a form included to order additional material if you deem it appropriate.
73, see you on the bands.
Dale Williams WA8EFK
Director
Great Lakes Division
