[ETS/PARC List] Minutes of 2014 Second Meeting ARRL Board of Directors July 21-22,

[Don WILSON]

Minutes of 2014 Second Meeting ARRL Board of Directors July 21-22,
2014
>______________________________________________________________________
>
>Yesterday the ARRL released the minutes from the July 21-22 ARRL Board
>of Directors meeting which had a few interesting things for DXers and
>Contesters, which are highlighted below.
>
>"the ARRL Board of Directors bestows on Padraig Lysandrou, KC9UUS the
>2014 Hiram Percy Maxim Award."
>
>"the ARRL Board of Directors bestows jointly on Kai Siwiak, KE4PT and
>Bruce Pontius, N0ADL, the 2013 Doug DeMaw, W1FB, Technical Excellence
>Award"
>
>"in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the League and
>Amateur Radio, the Board of Directors of the ARRL hereby elects Bruce
>J. Frahm K0BJ, to the position of Honorary Vice President, this 21st
>day of July, 2014."
>
>"35. On motion of Mr. Norris, seconded by Mr. Widin, the following was
>ADOPTED:
>
>WHEREAS the DX Century Club (DXCC) is the premier ARRL award program,
>and has amateur operator participants worldwide; and
>
>WHEREAS remote controlled stations are becoming more popular and
>represent new advancements in computer and radio technologies; and
>
>WHEREAS remote controlled stations both commercial "for hire/rent" and
>private pose both opportunities and challenges within the DXCC
>program;
>
>NOW BE IT RESOLVED that the ARRL Board of Directors hereby tasks the
>Programs and Services Committee to closely examine this issue and
>consider the possible advantages, disadvantages and any potential
>ethical issues as it relates strictly to the DXCC program. The PSC
>should report its findings and any recommendations back to the ARRL
>Board no later than the January 2015 Annual Meeting of the ARRL Board
>of Directors."
>
>"38. On motion of Mr. Widin, seconded by Mr. Ahrens, it was VOTED that
>the Board of Directors adopts the following policy concerning Logbook
>of the World.
>Logbook of the World(r) (LoTWTM)
>LoTW is amateur radio's most trusted vehicle for acknowledgement of
>contacts, worldwide.
>LoTW's Mission
>LoTW's defining role is to provide confirmation of two-way amateur
>communications with impeccable reliability and security. LoTW
>maintains a record of logged and confirmed contacts, and identifies
>confirmations associated with supported awards.
>Reliability, Security, Backup and Redundancy
>In view of the importance of the contacts contained therein, LoTW data
>will be backed up daily to remote storage. This backup is for the
>restoration of LoTW function only, and is not accessible to individual
>users to restore their contact information; individuals should not
>rely on LoTW as a backup system, and should provide their own backup
>arrangements. A backup system for LoTW hardware mirroring the primary
>system will be established, and will also serve as a test system for
>system upgrades, capacity testing and regression testing.
>LoTW uses very strong security to ensure that contacts cannot be
>fabricated. Users of LoTW are expected to protect their Callsign
>Certificate(s) so that contacts cannot be fabricated. If a Callsign
>Certificate is discovered to have been compromised, all contacts
>Minutes, ARRL Board of Directors Page 12 2014 Second Meeting, July 21-
>22
>submitted with that Callsign Certificate will be removed from LoTW,
>all confirmations generated by those contacts will be invalidated, and
>all award credit generated by those confirmations will be revoked.
>Users who allow their Callsign Certificates to be compromised or
>knowingly exploit compromised Callsign Certificates may lose their
>privileges of using LoTW and participating in ARRL-sponsored award
>programs. The integrity of LoTW must support the prestige of those
>awards that depend on it, such as DXCC. The goals of "ease of
>enrollment" and "ease of use" must be balanced against the requirement
>of maintaining an extremely high level of integrity.
>Awards Support
>LoTW's secondary role is to provide confirmations defined in terms of
>various awards such as DXCC, WAS, and VUCC, and of operating events
>such as the Centennial QSO Party. While ARRL awards are a priority for
>support by LoTW, awards offered by other organizations may be
>supported by Logbook, subject to prioritization by the ARRL
>Administration and Finance Committee. Details of such support and
>requisite fees will be negotiated on an individual basis.
>Features and Analysis
>It is not LoTW's mission to provide analysis of contacts. Individual
>amateurs may extract records of their confirmed QSOs for subsequent
>analysis and planning of future contacts, via databases, spreadsheets
>and the like. LoTW also provides an Application Programming Interface
>(API) by which developers can perform these analyses within their
>logging packages.
>ARRL may establish special relationships with sites which provide
>analysis of contacts (such as Club Log), to facilitate useful analyses
>that are not a direct part of LoTW's mission.
>Processing Time and Availability
>By the nature of many of the tasks performed by LoTW, processing is an
>offline (not real-time) activity. ARRL IT endeavors to keep the
>processing queue as short as possible, but quick processing is second
>to LoTW's primary goal of authenticating contacts. Interaction with
>users through TQSL and as logs are submitted and acknowledged is a
>real-time component of LoTW function, and will be kept as interactive
>as possible.
>Though often available around the clock, LoTW is not guaranteed to be
>a 24/7 application. Whenever possible, periods during which LoTW will
>not be available (for maintenance, etc.) will be published ahead of
>time (see further below).
>Communication
>LoTW aims at all times to keep users informed about downtime, both
>scheduled and un- scheduled. ARRL management will develop a policy
>concerning different categories of downtime and associated
>communications, outlining advance warnings when available and content
>of communications concerning unscheduled outages.
>Minutes, ARRL Board of Directors Page 13 2014 Second Meeting, July 21-
>22
>Online help for accomplishing tasks supported by LoTW will be
>available. Help and status information shall be available regardless
>of whether the user is logged in or not.
>Membership and costs
>US amateurs must be ARRL members to use LoTW for award credits. Cost
>of credits is determined by the price structure surrounding a
>particular award. There is currently no charge for an individual to
>extract results from LoTW, though this is used as a basis for awards
>by other issuers.
>Uploading logs is a free activity for all amateurs. DX stations are
>particularly encouraged to upload their logs.
>Currently (July 2014), the only fees are those required when contacts
>are used for supported awards. Premium services may be developed for
>LoTW which would require user fees."
>"39. On motion of Mr. Mileshosky, seconded by Mr. Norris, it was VOTED
>that:
>WHEREAS ARRL places great importance in the volunteer services
>provided by its DXCC card checkers in the field; and
>WHEREAS ARRL is devoted to the integrity of its DXCC program,
>including the program's field checking element; and
>WHEREAS the integrity of DXCC's field checking element is built upon
>by the level of involvement of its card checkers;
>THEREFORE the following DXCC Rules pertaining to field checking of QSL
>cards shall be modified as follows:
>Section IV, Paragraph 2.c.ii:
>"Candidates must be ARRL members who hold a DXCC Award and, with the
>exception of members of the DXCC Honor Roll, must be endorsed for at
>least 150 entities and have also submitted at least one application to
>DXCC via LoTW or traditional means within either of the last two
>calendar years;"
>Section IV, Paragraph 2.d:
>2d: "Applications for DXCC card checkers are approved by the Director
>of the ARRL Division Director in which they reside, the Membership and
>Volunteer Programs Manager, and the DXCC/Awards Manager. After the
>approvals, the Membership and Volunteer Programs Manager will then
>make the appointment."
>All of the July BOD Minutes can be found at
>http://www.arrl.org/board-meetings.
>______________________________________________________________________