I had a great time at the BARCFEST yesterday in Longmont. BARCFEST is mostly a swapmeet with the addition of a VE session, some door prizes and a tasty food concession.
While I sat at my campaign table people would wander by looking at all of the displayed treasures on the neighboring tables. I'd say "good morning" and sometimes we would start a conversation.
The issue that I came away with as most pressing on hams in this division is the one of antenna restrictions. All new housing seems to have covenant restrictions on antennas. It was expressed to me that it is disappointing that the ARRL hasn't been able to generate more leadership on this problem. I can see why that might be true if we look at it only on the legal side. Potential homeowners voluntarily enter into an agreement when they buy a house that limits their use of their own property. Where does the ARRL fit in a such an arrangement? On the outside!
Who is hurt? Someone who buys a house and agrees to the restrictions could later take up an interest in ham radio. Or, it may be argued that the only houses available require the agreement. But a point was raised that our efforts to get young people interested in ham radio are thwarted by these restrictions. Young-teen potential-ham lives in a house that his parents purchased and is stuck with the rules of the housing covenant!
Ideas
Maybe the first idea is to subvert or avoid the restrictions by building stealth antennas, attic antennas, indoor antennas and other unconventional antenna systems. This takes the issue into the same realm that apartment dwellers deal with every day.
Since the fundamental issue is real estate, moving the station away from home is a reasonable response. Club stations are kind of rare around here. But who says the radio club is only for drinking coffee and talking? Who says club dues should be $20/year? Start a radio club with 20 friends and charge $100/month dues and you have yourself enough money to buy some property and build an antenna system.
That may leave our youthful beginning hams in a money crunch. So we turn to the old idea of the Radio Elmer. Besides borrowing the Elmer's soldering gun, maybe the beginner could borrow the Elmer's operating position.
With the most recent crop of radios we get into the realm of remote control in a serious fashion. Do you know a ham who has an antenna farm but doesn't operate 24x7? There you have the makings for a remote station. Pool the cost of a modern radio and an internet connection and you are flying.
Finally there is the local park. With a QRP radio, a gel cell and some wire the park could be your regular QTH.
I hope I've given you some ideas. If your station is sitting idle, consider opening it up for some young hams to use during the next contest or invite some over to hit that rare DX. For a little more investment that neighbor kid who is always on the internet could be using your radio to learn CW or work a rare station. If you are in a radio club, think about using the club's resources not just to maintain the 2 meter repeater (one of 20 others in the area?) but to lease a quarter acre of ground for a tower, a Home-Depot shed and a generator. It could be "BYOG", bring your own gas.
Antenna restrictions can't keep a good ham down!
So where should the ARRL apply it's big hammer to this issue? First, I think that a study of the source and nature of antenna restrictions should be done. Do these housing associations use boilerplate language? Where do they obtain it? Can we influence that source? Second, some legal challenges may be in order if we can find test cases. Third, the promotion of alternative station sites, Elmering, subscription stations, rental stations, any other schemes that put antenna resources out there for hams to employ. A simple directory of internet accessible remote stations would be a good start, how about an addition to the affiliated club database that indicates if a club has a club station. And an internet station could use ARRL advertising and directories to bring in new subscribers and members.
I'm kind of excited about some of these ideas. Let me know what you think by posting a comment to this blog entry or send me an email.
73 for now
Chris
w0ep
BARC Hamfest in Longmont, CO this Sunday
I plan to attend the Boulder Amateur Radio Club's annual hamfest at the Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont, Colorado this Sunday, September 23rd. I would love to meet you and talk about representing your needs as Vice Director.
See BARCFEST for details about the hamfest.
Of course you are always invited to contact me by email or telephone, or leave a comment on this blog. You can get my email address by following the link at the right to see my profile, look me up on QRZ.com, or just put w0ep with arrl.net.
See BARCFEST for details about the hamfest.
Of course you are always invited to contact me by email or telephone, or leave a comment on this blog. You can get my email address by following the link at the right to see my profile, look me up on QRZ.com, or just put w0ep with arrl.net.
Election Ethics
In light of the article on the ARRL website posted today, I thought I would talk a little bit about my election strategy and how that fits with the ethics rules.
I really appreciate the election rules that the ARRL has adopted. They seem to be particularly designed to keep incumbents from having an edge over challengers. That is a hard thing for a board to do, and I appreciate the emphasis on the organization above what might be the personal goals of an individual director or vice-director.
My own campaigning so far has been limited to this website, some personal communications with local hams (sometimes over the air, discreetly), and a very small email campaign. I was
hoping to get to some more of the ham club meetings between Cheyenne and Denver to personally introduce myself, but not much of that has happened.
At one time I thought it would be pretty easy to download the FCC database of all amateur radio licensees, do a query for the ones in this division (by state), then send an email for each one to callsign@arrl.net. But there are two problems with that idea. The first problem is that it would be a mail-spam operation. I hate spam email. So that would be pretty hypocritical of me to spam all of the ARRL members in the division, and probably counterproductive. The second problem is that it would be using the arrl.net forwarding facility. One of the rules of the election is that ARRL organizational facilities and assets cannot be used for campaigning purposes.
Well, that does present a problem! A lot of ARRL members use the arrl.net email forwarding facility. Am I prohibited from sending any email to an arrl.net address that could be construed as campaign material? I think some clarification is needed in that area! I decided that I would draw the line by not doing a fishing expedition for email addresses on the arrl.net service. That would probably cause somebody, somewhere to have to intervene and try to clean up a mess (since there would be more bounced messages than good ones it would look like a spam attack or denial of service attack or something). But real addresses that were known to me that happened to be on the arrl.net service I would go ahead and use. My rationale is that such messages would not be a burden on the facility, would require no person's intervention and not incur some financial obligation to the organization.
I did decide to send out email. What I did is I looked up the section pages for Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah on the ARRL website. I took email addresses directly from those web pages and sent a very short email to those people. I reminded them of the upcoming election and told them I was running and that I had a website they could check out (this blog).
I did a similar thing with the ARRL affiliated club web search facility. I sent an email to the club contacts listed for clubs in these four states. Many of those addresses used the arrl.net facility.
The issue in the recent article seems to be openness and truthfulness. I've been trying really hard to stick to that. If I can't be truthful during the election than I don't think it will be any easier to do so when/if I get a position of responsibility.
It's not life-or-death to win this election. It's a volunteer position. I think it is desirable because I would like to meet more hams and participate in shaping the policies and direction of the ARRL. I think I have something to contribute in that area. But my opponent in the election is a capable person and it won't be a terrible thing if he gets elected instead of me. The attitude I'm supposed to have is one of service. If you'd rather have his service than mine then part of my service is to make that happen as smoothly and happily as possible.
I really appreciate the election rules that the ARRL has adopted. They seem to be particularly designed to keep incumbents from having an edge over challengers. That is a hard thing for a board to do, and I appreciate the emphasis on the organization above what might be the personal goals of an individual director or vice-director.
My own campaigning so far has been limited to this website, some personal communications with local hams (sometimes over the air, discreetly), and a very small email campaign. I was
hoping to get to some more of the ham club meetings between Cheyenne and Denver to personally introduce myself, but not much of that has happened.
At one time I thought it would be pretty easy to download the FCC database of all amateur radio licensees, do a query for the ones in this division (by state), then send an email for each one to callsign@arrl.net. But there are two problems with that idea. The first problem is that it would be a mail-spam operation. I hate spam email. So that would be pretty hypocritical of me to spam all of the ARRL members in the division, and probably counterproductive. The second problem is that it would be using the arrl.net forwarding facility. One of the rules of the election is that ARRL organizational facilities and assets cannot be used for campaigning purposes.
Well, that does present a problem! A lot of ARRL members use the arrl.net email forwarding facility. Am I prohibited from sending any email to an arrl.net address that could be construed as campaign material? I think some clarification is needed in that area! I decided that I would draw the line by not doing a fishing expedition for email addresses on the arrl.net service. That would probably cause somebody, somewhere to have to intervene and try to clean up a mess (since there would be more bounced messages than good ones it would look like a spam attack or denial of service attack or something). But real addresses that were known to me that happened to be on the arrl.net service I would go ahead and use. My rationale is that such messages would not be a burden on the facility, would require no person's intervention and not incur some financial obligation to the organization.
I did decide to send out email. What I did is I looked up the section pages for Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah on the ARRL website. I took email addresses directly from those web pages and sent a very short email to those people. I reminded them of the upcoming election and told them I was running and that I had a website they could check out (this blog).
I did a similar thing with the ARRL affiliated club web search facility. I sent an email to the club contacts listed for clubs in these four states. Many of those addresses used the arrl.net facility.
The issue in the recent article seems to be openness and truthfulness. I've been trying really hard to stick to that. If I can't be truthful during the election than I don't think it will be any easier to do so when/if I get a position of responsibility.
It's not life-or-death to win this election. It's a volunteer position. I think it is desirable because I would like to meet more hams and participate in shaping the policies and direction of the ARRL. I think I have something to contribute in that area. But my opponent in the election is a capable person and it won't be a terrible thing if he gets elected instead of me. The attitude I'm supposed to have is one of service. If you'd rather have his service than mine then part of my service is to make that happen as smoothly and happily as possible.
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