[QCWA Everglades Chapter #69] ARRL e-mail addresses

[Ken Simpson, W8EK]

Hello everyone,

We are getting more and more e-mail addresses for our members.  For 
this we thank you all.

Just to digress for a minute, if you know of a QCWA member that we do 
not have an e-mail address for, maybe a chapter member and maybe not, 
could you please send that e-mail on to us?

However, I would like to alert you to some potential problems that we 
are having.  Many of you use callsign at arrl.net as your e-mail address. 
  The idea for this is that it will be the same, even if you change 
ISPs or e-mail addresses.  Unfortunately, this has presented several 
problems.

1) It is necessary that the ARRL member keep ARRL notified of the 
proper "real" e-mail address to forward to.  QCWA has had a problem 
with this.  We send an e-mail to callsign at arrl.net, and that arrl.net 
address is good.  But the underlying "real" e-mail address bounces. To 
put it another way, the ARRL member has not kept ARRL informed of the 
correct forwarding address.  Of course the result of this is that the 
QCWA member does not get the e-mail, and there is nothing QCWA can do 
about it.

2) The arrl.net servers go down.  This has happened for extended 
periods of time recently.  ARRL farms this service out to another 
entity, so they have no control over it.  It is hard to tell when this 
will happen again.

3) Apparently there is a limit on the size of attachment that arrl.net 
addresses will forward.  It may be related to the forwarding address, 
or it may not.  It does not appear to be consistent.  Why is this a 
problem?  It often happens when you request certificates.  As you know 
the certificates are e-mailed to you.  Depending on what certificates, 
and how many, it is possible for the attachments to approach a 10 Meg 
size.  Sometimes these work fine, and sometimes not.  In some cases, 
the membership card that is attached (about 300K in size) does not 
make it thru.  Most of the time it does.

4)  In most cases, trying to post on our mailing lists from an 
@arrl.net address presents problems.  In many cases you think it has 
posted, but it has not.

So what can we do about these things?

We would like to have the underlying "real" e-mail addresses to use. 
We will list these in our data base as primary and use it for most 
correspondence.  We will also continue to list your @arrl.net address, 
but it will be secondary, to use if your "real" e-mail address does 
not go thru.

What would we like you to do?  We would like you to send us your 
"real" e-mail address, if you presently have an @arrl.net address on 
file with QCWA.  We will then make changes to our data base.

I appreciate your help and cooperation with this.  It should make it 
better for all concerned.

Thanks, 73,

Ken, W8EK

Ken Simpson, W8EK
QCWA Director and Executive Administrator
E-Mail to ExecAdmin at qcwa.org
QCWA Phone (352) 425-1097