[CW] ARRL MUST GET BETTER

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/6/05 1:52:48 PM Eastern Standard Time, w0lz at winlyn.us 
writes:

> Many of us have more than a few issues with the League these days, this 
> just
> being one example.  I personally feel that they do not support my mode, CW.
> That is a major issue for me.

What should ARRL do to support CW? 

  It also does not escape me that homebrew
> 
> articles in QST are limited, in many cases so as not to offend advertisers
> who think homebrew products compete with their sales..

I don't think that's the problem at all. I've looked at old and new QSTs, and 
the percentage of advertising is about the same over the decades.

What I see happening with homebrew articles in QST is:

1) There's a much wider range of amateur radio activities today, and so the 
homebrew on any one subject is spread thinner.

2) QEX gets some of the homebrew stuff.

3) (the biggie) Somebody has to actually build a project, document it and 
submit the article. Most of the homebrew you see in QST, old and new, wasn't b
uilt at Hq. Who's going to bell that cat?
> 
> Over the years I watched the AARP go from being a great lobby for a group of
> people, to being little less than a big business.  The ARRL seems to be
> moving in that direction.  I think BPL was a done deal from the beginning
> and that the League knew it.  They also new they had to fight it, to keep
> their members.  That probably doesn't make it a token effort, but it sure
> wasn't a great effort.

ARRL's *initial* submission to FCC on BPL was 121 pages of engineering data, 
observations, measurements and analysis. A lot more has followed. What more
have other ham groups done?

Whether BPL is a done deal remains to be seen. So far we have a few test 
sites around the country, and a couple of small installations. More than a few 
utilities have backed away from BPL, at least in part over interference issues. 

The BPL folks wanted far more than they got. Their proposal to FCC would have 
raised acceptable emission levels far above the already-too-high current 
levels, and redefined their role so that *licensed services* would be secondary to 
BPL by law.

Heck, how many of us outside of BPL areas would even know what BPL is, had 
not ARRL been banging the drum all this time?

> 
> As an amateur, I want the ARRL to support me, at least proportionally.  If
> they can not do this, what good are they and why do I owe them any
> allegiance.

What, exactly, does it mean for ARRL to support you? That's not a trick 
question - unless they're told what it means, they don't really know.

Example: There are several ARRL-sponsored CW contests every year. Does that 
constitute "supporting CW"? How about the fact that a CW QSO on Field Day earns 
double the credit of a 'phone QSO? (I remember when it wasn't that way!). 

Personally I think the time has come for CW-only subbands on the MF/HF bands. 
Say about the first 15% of each band. If enough of us tell ARRL and FCC that 
we want such subbands, we might get them. But not telling them is useless.

73 de Jim, N2EY