[OKDXA] Please Renew Your Membership

[Kim Elmore]

Membership renewals are due. If you got an email letter from Jeff 
Martin, K5WE, your renewal is due. If you're still not sure, check your 
membership status on the website. "But," I hear you ask, "Why renew?" 
That's a great question! I'm glad you asked!

Without intending to sound arrogant, I look at DXers as a very distinct 
class of amateur radio operator, perhaps a bit above average. We are 
clearly interested in the aspect of communicating directly with someone 
far way using only RF from our station to theirs. This means no 
repeaters, no EchoLink, no satellites, etc., only from our radio 
directly to theirs. Mind! There's nothing wrong with repeaters or 
satellites of EchoLink, etc. Those simply don't fulfill the challenge 
that brought us here. We have to know a lot about our radios, antennas, 
and how they work, along with vagaries of propagation. Not just HF 
propagation either, but VHF/UHF as well. It's not all about the 
ionosphere for all of us though I admit that for me, it is. I find an 
irresistible romance (if you'll allow me some poetic license) in the 
experience of communicating with someone on the other side of the world 
using nothing more than a radio that creates a light bulb's worth or RF 
radiation connected to a bit wire strung between convenient supports, 
rarefied air, sunlight, and the Earth's magnetic field. Even though I 
understand it well enough, there's still a fascination with it, a bit of 
magic about it all.

DXers are a diverse lot. Many of us enjoy contesting and almost all of 
us use contests to enhance our DXCC or VUCC status and totals at some 
point. DXing is a game of patient strategy: how will conditions change 
to favor a path to the rare (or not so rare) entity I need? On HF, 
hearing the auroral flutter tells us about the quality of our path. On 
VHF/UHF, flutter might tells us about multipath and how the tropospheric 
conditions might be changing. To do what we want, we must be sensitive 
to propagation conditions and we must be adept at weak signal work. This 
obtains because we're curious about these things. Not everyone is, and 
certainly not everyone is curious enough to learn about them.

The OKDXA exists to 1) promote the DX phase of our hobby by encouraging 
newcomers, 2) to encourage camaraderie among the membership, 3) to 
support statewide operating activities (like the OK QSO party), 4) to 
disseminate DX information, and finally 5)
to support strategic DXpeditions. That last one is where most of the 
dues money goes: to support DXpeditions to rare locations that many of 
us need for our DXCC totals. If you're still wondering if you want to 
renew your membership, think about what attracted you to the OKDXA in 
the first place. Whatever it was, it's still here. If we've somehow not 
met your expectations, tell us what those are and we'll do our best to 
make sure they're met. If you've simply been putting it off, 
procrastinate no more: renew now and ensure OKDXA's future!

73 & CU in the pileups,

Kim N5OP

-- 

Kim Elmore, Ph.D. (Adj. Assoc. Prof., OU School of Meteorology, CCM, PP 
SEL/MEL/Glider, N5OP, 2nd Class Radiotelegraph, GROL)

/"A great second violinist plays second fiddle to no one." //– Robert C. 
Marsh, Chicago Sun-Times./