[AMRadio] Shelby Fest

[Frank Barnes]

Thank you, Charlie, for the detective work and reporting.  I'm one of the
"old timers" who focuses on HF communications rather than Mesh, JT8 or
digital comms, although I 100% support those who favor those activities.
QST has drifted more and more toward those types of services and this has
made QST less attractive to me.  But I still subscribe and have for over 50
years.  I'm very supportive of QST's subject interest dilemma; after all,
how many articles about 6AG7-807 tube transmitters can attract interest?
Thus we need to write about digital technologies with a little analog stuff
thrown in for us ancients.  So here's hoping that the QEX-QST merger will
go well (I think the merger is a good idea) and that ARRL's QST can remain
a monthly magazine.  When an organization goes to a quarterly pub, people
tend to forget about the organization for several months.  We have short
memories, apparently.
73,
Frank
www.w4npn.org

On Sun, Sep 6, 2026 at 2:09 PM CL in NC via AMRadio <amradio at mailman.qth.net>
wrote:

> When I mentioned 'Shelby, NC event coordinator' was not referring to the
> Shelby club, but to the City of Shelby. events coordinator.  At the time,
> she for some odd reason was very antagonistic toward the fest and actually
> drove them away to Dallas, NC.  That venue was actually pretty nice, a lot
> more trees and a big air conditioned meeting hall.  After that person was
> fired at the behest of the local merchants that realized they lost a ton of
> money, they were successful at luring the fest back to Shelby.   But as was
> commented, all fests are really falling off except for a few of the big
> ones like Huntsville, Dayton and Orlando.
>
> From a 'source' of things ARRL I have talked to on the phone at length and
> in person at Shelby, the membership is still in decline and they can not
> figure out how to attract the biggest group of license holders, the
> Technician Class.  According to him, the Tech class has a 'We don't need
> the League' attitude.  A big part of the decline is related to long time
> dedicated members going SK.  He said they ran a call out to life members to
> see how many were still out there, out of the total, found 1500 who were
> SK's, some as long as 15 years ago.  One widow when asked why she didn't
> call and let them know, said he wanted to keep receiving QST to put it on
> the coffee table as it has been there her whole life.  There is serious
> discussion at the Board level to bring back QST as a quaterly publication,
> QEX will be rolled into it, and QEX with only 700 subscribers will be no
> longer printed within a month or two.  They have actively been seeking out
> how to model and manage their publica
>  tions after other venues, studying and conferring with groups like the
> NRA who just recently went to quarterly after reducing their number of mag
> offerings, AOPA who prints a monthly mag, and Firecrown media who still
> print many hobby magazines, some still monthly.  Of course, postage has
> become a real problem too.  'They' (Wall Street bottom liners) shut down
> the Canton Paper Mill here in WNC, 'they' shut down two of the biggest pulp
> mills down near Savannah, GA, and all these publications and printers say
> the same thing, they can't get the paper.  Back in 2022, the printer for
> the ARRL said the only way they could print the May editions is if the ARRL
> would find and buy the paper, and pay them an extra $500K bucks, the League
> had only $700,000 they could have used, so that was the last of QST.
>
> I thnk the League still needs to make some serious changes and become
> viable and useful again, but I believe their NE mindset has their critical
> thinking ability blocked, and maybe a relocation to say, Oklahoma,  the
> middle of the US, would make their signal have better coverage, and
> Oklahoma thinking clear up their frozen Connecticut mindset.
>
> Charlie in NC
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-- 
Frank Barnes
www.W4NPN.org <http://www.W4NPN.net>
Chapel Hill, NC
Grid Square FM05
Cell 919.260.7955 <(919)%20260-7955>