Hi All,

Seeing as how there's finally something worthwhile to chime in on here
(a refreshing break before getting back to the mindless flame wars
that have characterized this NG for the last year or two), I'll
de-lurk and contribute my $0.02 on this subject, in the hope that it
might turn out to be worth at least $0.02.

In the comments that follow, I've quoted comments from several other
posters as well as from Hans' original post, so as to get all my
comments into one place rather than having them fragmented in several
replies throughout the thread. As a result, this post is rather on the
lengthy side, but...well, like i said, hopefully it's at least worth
the $0.02. Here goes:

On Tue, 03 May 2005 14:21:48 GMT, "KØHB" got
us started with his now well-known (to regulars anyway) PBI:

The growth in numbers of Amateurs over the past decade has been overwhelmingly
via the Technician license. This segment of the Amateur population does not seem
highly attracted to ARRL membership, nor affiliative with the "national
association" nature of ARRL.

Interestingly, however, these new Amateurs are "local joiners". They attach some
importance to public service communications events such as disaster drills,
SkyWarn, flood relief, marathons, parade communications, and similar functions
of a local nature. Interestingly, even though their on-the-air participation is
limited, they represent a significant portion of the crew at Field Day, hamfest
staffs, and similar "local" events. They are also well represented on the
rosters of many local clubs.

I think it's worth noting here, the old adage about birds of a feather
flocking together. It's been my experience that people join the local
ham radio clubs for a variety of reasons, just as they get involved
with amateur radio to begin with for a wide variety of reasons. When
you bottom-line it, though, a local club remains a sure-fire way for a
newcomer to meet others who share at least some of their interests in
amateur radio. For many it's a way of introducing themselves to the
other hams in their area, sort of like, "I've got my license and I'm
here now, so when you hear me on the local repeaters you don't have to
worry that I might be a bootlegger."

When they get to the local clubs and hook up with other newcomers (and
the observation that the vast majority of newcomers to the ARS enter
via the Technician route is dead on...that's why it's called the
"entry-level license class"), they find the other Techs basically
doing the only things they're permitted to do, absent any meaningful
HF privileges unless they pass a code test - they're doing Skywarn;
tactical comms for parades, bike races, marathons; Field Day, etc.

Another old adage: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Thus, it's no
surprise that many new Techs join in these activities. This is the
same route I myself took when I entered into the ARS back in '99 and
I'm still active in these pursuits now, except it's in a leadership
role rather than as one who is learning the ropes, so to speak.

Following is a PBI (Partially Baked Idea) to favorably position ARRL (and
Amateur Radio in general) with these newcomers to our hobby.


I propose that the ARRL BoD consider an initiative to attract these newcomers to
an interest in ARRL by establishment of a new "Department of Community Support".


The mission of this department of ARRL would be to organize, train, support, and
nurture a system of tactical communications teams on the LOCAL level. I use the
term "tactical" as opposed to "emergency" intentionally to broaden the scope of
the mission to include a wide variety of community-level communications needs.

Mike Coslo contributed on this that many of the people he can count on
for such activites are Techs, and added:

"That is a good idea. Tactical communications would serve as a good training ground."

For what it's worth, I concur. In fact, I think tactical
communications is a skill that is too often ignored as many public
service and emergency communications groups opt for developing
proficiency in formal traffic handling - which is a valuable skill in
the right circumstances, but unless a group is located somewhere that
circumstances warrant the frequent use of formal traffic handling
(like being somewhere that often gets smacked by earthquakes,
tornadoes, hurricanes, and other major disasters that result in
relatively long relief efforts and a lot of health & Welfare
traffic)...well, many groups will only rarely need formal traffic
handling skills. Tactical communications skills, on the other hand,
are something I think any such group is going to always need,
especially if they are doing parades, races, etc.

Incidentally, I personally use the term "public service
communications" to distinguish this type of work from the more
commonly thought of "emergency" communications that is used during and
in the aftermath of some sort of disaster.

At any rate, to continue...

This "department" would be outside the current Field Organization, and given
VISIBLE and COMMITTED volunteer leadership at Director or Vice President rank.


Did I hear someone muttering "Isn't that what ARES is all about?" or "Our
current field organization already provides for this." Good points -- ARRL
already has some of the pieces in place, and it looks good on paper.
Unfortunately these "pieces" tend to be scattered around the ARRL organization
and are not linked into a cohesive program. Support and leadership
responsibility, from Newington all the way down to the local level, is often a
collateral duty and the attention level is spotty and often diluted by competing
responsibilities and personal interests. Leadership attention at the SM level
is widely variable, and SM's have a diminished mindshare of the general
membership by the unfortunate H.Q. decision to remove "Section News" from the
national journal of our Association.

On this passage, Steve, K4YZ, commented as follows:

First of all, there's already flexibility written into the ARES
program to allow for it's implementation based upon local needs or
concerns. The needs of emergency planners in Plymouth, MN or
Winchester, TN are going to be different than those of New York City or
Miami, FL.

As I see it, Steve, the problem with this is that in many (most?)
areas, the local ARES group wears two hats, serving also as the local
RACES group, and because FEMA guidelines for RACES call for its
implementation at the County level, there's often a lack of ARES/RACES
groups having established relationships with local governments (city,
town, village, etc.). That is something that, as a result, often falls
to the local clubs - but ARRL sees it as an ARES function and local
clubs looking for support for their efforts in this area end up
getting referred to the local ARES leadership...which is often
hesitant to help because they see the clubs' efforts as undermining
their own.

Steve continued:

I don't see how a nationally directed program could possibly do
anything more than appear to be micromanaging.

Again, admitting that their is a niche for local groups to be involved
at a local level and offering some support to them independent of the
ARES (or ARES/RACES) mechanism would not be micromanaging. Often there
are entirely different missions involved, and even when the missions
overlap, again it does not hurt ARES all that much for the local clubs
to have a relationship with a city government's disaster preparedness
officials in a county where the ARES group has a relationship with the
county's disaster prearedness office.

In other words, this would eliminate the "turf war" mentality that
often crops up when the local clubs, or other groups independent of
ARES, start to actually succeed at what they're doing.

Steve went on...

Secondly, the ARRL Special Services Club's program already offers
assistance for helping to manage some aspects of club activities,
offers of sponsorship, etc.

What they (the ARRL) COULD do, without creating a whole new
"branch" and field directorship with it, would be to start spending
some more money to get more recruiting materials, including TV/Radio
"commercials" into the field. They could "regionalize" the materials
with pictures of local clubs, landmarks, etc in them to help "identify"
them to the target audience.

To this I say, "Bingo!"

As one of two co-coordinators of the public service communications
team sponsored by a local SSC, I know from personal experience that
one of our biggest challenges is just letting people know we are here.
This is exactly the kind of support I had in mind above.

OK, back to Hans' original PBI:

Without dwelling overlong on the
shortcomings of the current situation, I think we can all agree on four points:

I'd settle for seeing everyone agree on ONE point. Four is really
asking a lot. But... grin

1) A focused national program with Director (or higher) level leadership would
have more impact than the current fragmented attention to "local" Amateur Radio.

I'd say that depends on whether the program deals directly with
amateurs operating at the local level (in which case I tend to agree),
or attempts to use the existing field organization to accomplish its
goals (in which case I have serious doubts, mainly because I'm
convinced that in many areas the existing field organization is so
completely out of touch with "local" amateur radio as to render any
meaningful progress in a project of this nature highly unlikely).

2) Such a program, if successful, would give Amateur Radio valuable credibility
in the regulatory and legislative arenas, and with national organizations like
Homeland Security, FEMA, and the Red Cross.

I'm not so sure about this. As far as FEMA is concerned, and FEMA is
part of the DHS, they're primarily looking at RACES, and their
guidelines call for implmentation at the county level. To me, "local"
means this city, this town, this village. In some areas, county-level
might work. In my own area, I'm quite sure it would not. As for the
Red Cross, in my area the two Red Cross chapters are served agencies
of two different county ARES groups. As for the group I co-coordinate,
we have a relationship with a city that is served by the Red Cross
chapter that is based in a county whose ARES/RACES group has them as a
served agency, but it is not the same county our city is in!

3) Such a program, if successful, would serve to elevate the perceived value of
Amateur Radio with local civil authorities, perhaps softening the effects of
issues like tower ordinances, etc.

I'm in complete agreement.

4) Such a program, strongly identified with the League, would provide a
membership "attractor" to those classes of Amateurs that are now only locally
"affiliative". Gaining some traction into this huge reservoir of
potential members would be a godsend to the health and growth of ARRL.

Again, I'm in complete agreement.

What would need to be done to implement such a plan. Here are some "off the top
of my head" thoughts.

-- Define the mission and organizational structure.

You've already defined the mission quite well. The organizational
structure definitely needs to be defined.

-- Many of the people (SEC/EC's, etc) are already in place. The organization
structure would need to include a short chain-of-command headed by a focused
leader at Newington.

If you're going through the SEC/EC's, you're going through ARES. In my
opinion, this is not going to work in many areas, including my own.
This needs to be totally separated from the existing field
organization, in my opinion.

-- Move Field Day and SET into this organization as "their" events.

This is throwing the new dog a bone...however, I think the local
amateur radio clubs that sponsor public service communications groups
are probably already active in Field Day and already consider FD to be
one of "their" events - I know we do. Much less so with SET, which is
the "other" annual ARRL-sponsored EmComm event, and (in this area at
least) gets far less attention than Field Day.

My feeling is that Field Day and SET are fine the way they are, and
let both the ARES groups and the new local public service
communications groups participate.

-- Devise a recognition vehicle to give visibility to noteworthy work by
individuals and teams in this Department. This visibility (QST?) should extend
outside the organization to the "general population" of hams as a recruiting
tool.

You've already noted the boneheaded mistake the league made in
removing the section news from QST - undoing that mistake would be a
good start.

The user here who goes by Billy Beeper has commented:

The ARRL has made an effort to get web pages up for each division and
section. That is the method they use of distributing regional and
local information.

It's easy to forget that not everyone has Internet access. As far as
the section news on the net is concerned, I'm subscribed to the
section news summary and am supposed to receive it monthly via e-mail,
but have received nothing since December. If they are going to call
QST "The Official Journal Of The ARRL" then the section news should be
in each month's issue, period. That's the only way of insuring that it
reaches each and every member. ARRL membership is about ham radio, not
about the Internet. When they have a magazine that is sent to each
and every member on a monthly basis, relying on the Internet to
distribute regional and local information is just plain bull****, IMO.

-- Establish a new periodical (like NCJ for contesters and QEX for
experimenters) to help build a "sense of community" among the participants.

I can see another magazine like QST, full of advertising, with a
little note at the bottom of a page somewhere inviting you to visit
the ARRL website if you want anything really useful. In which case,
thanks, but I'm going to pass. There's also the problem of how to get
the word out about this new periodical to its target audience. Since
the audience you want to reach isn't ARRL members, talking about it in
QST isn't going to cut it, because your target audience isn't
receiving QST and isn't reading it.

-- Educate local civil authorities about this organization, their capabilities,
and how to best interface with them to take advantage of their capabilities.

Definitely. This is exactly the kind of support that is lacking now,
in terms of what the local clubs are able to do in this regard.

In order to build some critical mass and gain traction, the outreach effort to
build these teams should not initially stress ARRL membership for "grassroots"
level players, but rather depend on a strong ARRL identity to build esprit de
corps and lead to an attitude of support and affiliation with the parent
organization. Perhaps appointment to team leadership positions would be
conditioned on ARRL membership.

Well, first of all, I think you produce a more effective team if you
base appointment to leadership positions on ability rather than on
what cards one does or doesn't have stuffed into one's wallet.

Beyond that, though, if you start to tie in ARRL membership, at that
point, with many Techs you crash head-on into the other issue that a
couple of guys here have already raised, namely, the perception held
by many people about the ARRL and the Morse code issue. Based on what
many people have said to me in eye-to-eye discussions, this issue is
one of the major reasons why a lot of people choose not to join ARRL.

Len Anderson commented with respect to the ARRL position on code
testing over the years as follows:

The ARRL could have taken a position of MODERN LEADER-
SHIP a decade ago.

Actually, the ARRL could have taken a position of modern leadership
THREE decades ago when the mid-1970's Communicator Class proposal was
out there. Instead, the League chose to register strong opposition to
the idea of any no-code license class, delaying the introduction of a
codeless license class for another twenty years - something that many
have never forgotten, myself included.

In fact, personally, I never will forget it.

Oh, yes, I've gotten over it - I'm now an ARRL member, I'm a duly
appointed (by the SM) PIO in this section, and have a leadership role
in an ARRL SSC here - but a lot of guys my age would have been
involved in amateur radio twenty years earlier, and many retain that
*perception* of the League today despite the current ARRL proposal for
retaining the code test only for the Extra class license. Whether the
perception is accurate or not, it is the *perception* in the minds of
Tech licensees that matters, especially NCTs.

If someone sees ARRL as acting in opposition to their best interests,
they're probably not going to join ARRL...and this is how many hams
have felt about ARRL for years.

In this respect, Len and Billy are quite correct - the ARRL has shot
itself in the foot more than once on this issue, at least with respect
to the hams who would otherwise have benefitted from reduced emphasis
on code proficiency in the testing procedures.

How they go about fixing that now, I don't know. For one thing, they
should push hard for and hope for the FCC to get off its collective
duff and allow Techs some meaningful HF privileges without a code
test. Then, they need to take advantage of the opportunity this will
present by providing some support for the newcomers once they start to
exercise their new privileges. Sponsoring a new contest aimed at the
new operators might help. Incorporating a new award perhaps - or maybe
bring back RCC and...what was it called, the Friendship Award (where
you tried to get a contact with callsigns ending in all the letters
from A to Z)? But they've got to do something to offset the perception
many people have of the League having crapped on no-coders for thirty
years if they want to ever see those hams joining ARRL in any
significant numbers.

Obviously a lot of this proposal needs a great deal of "fleshing out" and
refinement, but I present it in the spirit of a "topic for discussion". I'm
sure that the minds gathered here will not be bashful about improving my PBI.

Hans, anything would be better than the endless flame wars in here,
but you've actually come up with something constructive that just
might be a good start toward doing something positive for the ARRL and
for the ARS. Here's hoping it works out!

73 de John, KC2HMZ