Very well said Steve. This reflector, and I guess the world in general, has a lot of people who seek to only create barriers and like to play the blame game. You are so right that the ARRL is all that we have. They aren't perfect, they can and should be better. One of the best ways of changing things that you may not be happy with, is to get involved.
The ARRL exists only for amateur radio. And for many years they have been the words and eyes of the amateur community in our government, and in the international stage. I'm sure that without them, we would probably have a very small amount of frequencies that we could use; most of them would have been auctioned off a long time ago. PRB-1 is an extremely important victory that was won, and many people seem to have forgotten that.
What's funny to me is that many times there is more activity on these reflectors than on the air. All of those complaining about multiple things especially about satellites, I never hear on the birds. To me, that's the same as someone who complains about their elected official, yet never bothers to vote.
My elevation rotor is being repaired, so my satellite antennas are down. In the meantime, I just worked 3 stations on AO-16 using my dual band vertical.
73 de W4AS Sebastian
On Oct 7, 2008, at 6:03 PM, STeve Andre' wrote:
I think thats unfair, Dave. The ARRL has a ton of interests and tries to do
a tremendous amount of stuff with a fairly small budget. They try (and, are sometimes trying), and they do a lot of good.
If you aren't satisifed with their talk of staellites, and I can understand why, it would be best if you worked on teaching them and getting them to really understand.
Don't say that you've tried and failed. I'll believe you, but failures simply mean that it hasn't been brought up enough. This goes for any of the speciality modes that ham radio has. I've heard plenty of groussing on other mailing lists too, for perceived slights by the ARRL from other smaller speciality communities.
The ARRL is all we have. There is no point to try and create something else because I don't think enough people could/would ever step up to do anything, not that I think it would be reasonable to do that. Instead, I think it is encumbant upon ALL amateurs to step up and help the ARRL, to reshape it in such a way as to accurately reflect the wishes and desires of the groups that make up all the interests in our hobby.
What this means is Politics meets Ham Radio.
Politics is the interaction between people, say about three of more of them. An entity like the ARRL has internal politics, and deals with *real world* politics, like BPL. Sometimes, they make some pretty stunning wins, like the recent crabbing they did with regard to the FCC's proceedural moves with BPL. That helped ham radio hugely, for it reminded the FCC that the little puny ham community can create legal muster that has to be reckoned with, not to mention the actual problems with BPL itself.
The ARRL is hardly perfect. They've come a long way however, and with our help they will improve. If anyone reading this has given up on them in disgust, please remember that first (or even fifth) efforts at things might not work, and one needs to plug away at the cause...
Sending reasoned discourse to them--and getting your friends to do that as well--is a start to changing the VUCC regs, or whatever.
But let us not give up on the entity that is us. Instead let us work on changing the parts that need it.
--STeve Andre' wb8wsf en82