Author: N0SSC

Twenty-something year old amateur radio operator. I love everything about ham radio. Trying to learn CW and contest more, and doing my best to promote youth involvement and retention in this rapidly aging hobby.

I can’t be an ARRL Director and I am sad about that. But also not.

Good that you remembered this from the last article.

In 2018, a lot of things changed in my life. I got married, I bought a house, I changed my last name, I changed my job, and I changed emails. In all of that commotion I had no less than 54 venues – banks, credit cards, airlines, hotels, passport, drivers license, etc etc etc – to update. Unfortunately for my chances to become an ARRL Director this year, one fell through the cracks, which was my ARRL profile.

My membership lapsed officially on March 31, 2019. I didn’t notice the missing QSTs, nor did I receive the renewal emails and mailings since they were being sent to my old home address (and the USPS failed to forward any of my mail to my new address, as I came to find out well after this was all said and done).

On the morning of June 14, 2019, I got a message from a coworker (and ham) to read an article that might interest me that was March’s QST, and so I tried to log in to ARRL to access Digital QST, but I couldn’t. And that’s when I realized…

Oh no.

Oops.

That’s where all my QSTs have gone!

(Wait why aren’t they being forwarded by USPS…)

I immediately renewed my membership and read the article, and updated all of my ARRL member information and all was good.

Fast forward 7 months: the ARRL CEO is kicked out, the ARRL Midwestern Division Director is up for re-election this year, and I suddenly have an urge to run for the Director so I can pursue my goals of getting the ARRL modernized and relevant, and more interested in youth initiatives, engagement, and recruitment.

I frantically emailed past friends who were directors and other ARRL staff and leaders to get a pulse on whether or not it’s a good idea (sorry y’all!), and I start getting some advice from other N0SSC.com readers that it might be a great idea. Low-key growing some hype there.

I’m reading the ARRL Articles of Association and By-Laws (to make sure I’m not a big idiot on the internet) and then suddenly, out of nowhere, I remember this 75-day lapse in membership happened this year and now my hopes and dreams of infiltrating the ARRL’s upper echelon with my brilliant ideas of youth advocacy are dashed.

I sent a message to the ARRL’s Assistant Secretary Dan Henderson (N1ND) just to be sure I couldn’t get by on a technicality or exception, but he told me the Ethics and Elections committee would not be able to render a decision until I had submitted my petition for nomination; in other words, only after I campaigned, petitioned, and submitted my application in July would I know whether or not they would let me actually be a director. I’m also told by another director (who was initially inspiring me to run in the first place) that someone was recently disqualified for the same exact reason, only having lapsed a few months too. I certainly don’t want to be that guy. To do all of that work, blowing up the status quo, touring ham fests, calling and sending letters to hams, and growing support for my campaign all to fall flat on my face due to my membership lapse is definitely NOT the right foot to start on.

It’s sad because throughout college I told myself that once I graduated I’ll buy a Lifetime membership, only coming to realize the $1225 fee is a hard pill to swallow when you’re sinking $3000 into your student loans and all you get is a stinkin’ magazine full of irrelevant ads for the rest of your life (and the warm and fuzzy feeling that you jipped the ARRL out of at least $1,600 for it too!) (that’s not actually a warm and fuzzy feeling) (also sometimes I really like QST articles).

Thankfully, there is more than one way to skin the cat. I continue to help lead the Young Amateurs Radio Club as well as Youth on the Air (which needs your donations by the way!!!) and through those programs I think I can bring considerably more influence on amateur radio as a whole (and still have a positive influence on the ARRL directors and other leaders) than being a director myself. Plus I don’t have to worry about jumping headfirst into a boiling cauldron of who-the-heck-knows. It’ll be nice to let the CEO drama blow over and things to settle down before I start poking that bear, and also investigate other ways to bring some of my ideas to the table.

But just so you know – the battle may be won, but the war is far from over. Look out for me in 2023.

Meanwhile if you’re in the ARRL’s Midwest division (IA, MO, KS, NE) and you share my vision for ARRL, AND you’ve definitely been an ARRL member for at least 4 continuous years prior to 2020, I hope your name will be on my ballot. Also worth mentioning again that the Atlantic, Dakota, Delta, and Great Lakes divisions are up for reelection this year as well.

Also I’ll be submitting my resume for CEO ok thanks bye

jk.















or am i?

How to run for the ARRL Board of Directors (Because I think they need it)

The ARRL loses another CEO, whats going on? Only one way to find out…

Today’s news of ARRL’s CEO Howard Michel (WB2ITX) being “voted out” by the Board of Directors is another strike in the saga of the League’s struggle in finding new leadership after Dave Sumner’s (K1ZZ) retirement.

I thought Howard was doing alright. He showed up to a lot of hamfests, spoke at many club meetings and conventions, and generally shared a message of optimism regarding the future of the ARRL. I suppose that message was not well-received by the Board. Nobody seems to have any idea why the board voted him out. If I had to speculate, it might be some sort of conflict of interest (the ARRL has a VERY long section of COI in their By Laws), while the MyARRLVoice people are saying that “the ARRL BoD did not judge his job performance to be satisfactory and decided a change in leadership is necessary.”

UPDATE!

UPDATE 2 (26 Jan 2020): Southwestern Director Dick Norton N6AA addressed the following claim and discussed the decision in somewhat more detail in K7AGE’s video from Quartzfest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7o2nBPQZ0g

Additionally I spoke with the Central and Midwest Division Directors (W9XA and K0DAS) at the St. Louis Winterfest, but they did not disclose any new facts, reiterating that the CEOs contract wasn’t renewed and to wait until the minutes are released for more information.

UPDATE 1 (20 Jan 2020): I did some digging and I was led to Howard’s Facebook page, where he posted about his company’s robot last year. To me this implies that was still actively working for or had obligations with his Chinese robotics company, which the ARRL By Laws #35 seems to frown upon. It might also be a conflict of interest, though as written COI by laws seem to only apply to directors, vice directors, president, and vice president. Obviously, I am not a lawyer. Do note that this isn’t a smoking gun, and from what I’m told there are myriad other factors that lead to his removal.

Screenshot of facebook.com/howard.michel.3 (public profile), 21 Jan 2020 09:39CST. I haven’t friended him, so this is public!
From http://www.arrl.org/arrl-by-laws: ARRL By Law #35 implies the CEO shouldn’t have another job. Doing so also probably violates conflict of interest by laws but again I am not a lawyer and there’s likely other reasons leading to his removal.

His departure comes at a particularly awkward time for the St. Louis Winterfest where he was slated to speak at ARRL Forum and a banquet next weekend (January 24-26, 2020). We’ll see how that shakes out!

We’ve seen a lot of drama in the ARRL over the last 5 years. Tom Gallagher (NY2RF) became CEO, Dick Norton (N6AA) was publicly censured, Ria Jairam (N2RJ) was elected as Hudson Division director, N6AA was un-censured, Tom retired as CEO, and Howard Michel came on as CEO leaving 2 years later to the day. Meanwhile many threads of dwindling membership, lack of transparency, signs of internal political infighting and inaction have been popping up all over the place. The Parity act, the CalFire Repeater debacle, a number of natural disasters have also came and went, all putting a lot of pressure on the ARRL to get things done.

I think a big, BIG change is needed at the Board of Directors level. I think Ria N2RJ is the first of many new faces to save the Board from it’s incumbency.

Meanwhile I have been thinking…what would it take to get on the ARRL Board of Directors?

What does it take to run for ARRL Board of Directors? It’s actually quite simple: Be 21 years of age, be a licensed ham and ARRL member for at least four years prior to nomination, and don’t have any conflicts of interest. All you need after that is to get nominated and elected by ARRL members of your division. Easy, right?

I think I might give it a shot before I turn 30.

What would you do if you were on the ARRL’s Board of Directors? Split QST from members-only? Make youth membership free? Livestream Board meetings? Push updates to the website and store?

Pacifico Mountain SOTA Expedition with KI6NAZ’s Ham Radio Crash Course

Josh Nass, KI6NAZ, (aka Hoshnasi) runs the Ham Radio Crash Course YouTube channel. His videos cover a wide variety of topics in amateur radio and tend to lean towards experiences related to being prepared for communications emergencies while also just having a lot of fun with radio (if building a lawn-chair dipole is any indication). He also is an avid backpacker and Summits on the Air activator, so one day he thought, why not round up a group of followers to a SOTA expedition. And so he did!

With the help of Jerry Hildeman KG6HQD, they chose Pacifico Mountain (SOTA W6/CT-015) in the Angeles National Forest due to its ease of accessibility, forgiving hike, and a decent primitive campground at the summit. They chose a 4.68mi hiking route that follows a closed forest service road up to the summit, although we hiked up to find that A. there was a much closer parking spot and B. you could actually drive up to the summit! But that’s alright.

I’ve been dying to get outside more. Missouri has some beautiful outdoors, but I just needed a jumpstart, and this, plus a bunch of Southwest and Hyatt points earned by Jesten (my wife) and I, plus a friend to travel with – Kyle AAØZ – was the perfect impetus to get off my butt and onto a mountain.

My Gear Load-out

I spent way too much money on gear for this trip, but everybody’s a gear nerd so here’s what I went with:

The Showstopper

The flight was non-eventful, through Dallas-Love and onto Burbank. BUR is a pretty sad airport. Its small and crowded, and the baggage claim is literally outdoors. Our baggage carousel broke while bags from our flight were coming out. Our bags were stuck on conveyors somewhere in the system, so a worker climbed up the chute to manually drag bags out.

“Last bag” was called and our luggage was nowhere to be found. The luggage that contains basically all of our gear.

The Southwest baggage office worker was remorseful. They started looking around for the bags and out of curiosity I used my phone to ping my Tile, a key-chain Bluetooth locator beacon, and it said it was nearby! That’s a good sign. I walked around and someone came out of a door with my bag asking, “is this yours?” I could hear the chirping Tile in the bag.

Kyle was not so lucky. The Southwest worker had bad news – his gear was stuck at Dallas Love, and wouldn’t be here until 13:00 the next day (when the next flight from DAL arrives). We left the airport at 23:00. Our disappointment was immeasurable, and our day was ruined.

On the bright side, he was awarded a $100 SWA voucher, and Avis ran out of “regular cars” and upgraded me a little bit:

They weren’t actually out of regular cars.

The Miracle

I called Southwest that night but they had no good news to give. We were doomed to wait around until 13:00. We turned down.

That morning, we called some more. Still no news. We figured if they would send the bag on a layover rather than a nonstop, it would get to BUR much faster, but the airline couldn’t say if that could happen.

08:09: A call comes in from Southwest: THE BAG IS ON ITS WAY AND WILL BE HERE AT 9AM!!! It turns out they DID send it through a connection on the first flight out from DAL to Phoenix, onto Burbank. I only wish we knew about that sooner but this was great news. We packed up, got breakfast and jetted out the door back to BUR where Kyle retrieved his bag. ONTO PACIFICO!

The Drive

LA traffic in the morning was no issue, and hot damn the V8 Mustang was a hell of a vehicle to drive through the mountains. However, Highway 2 that snakes through the Angeles Forest is a death trap. Bicycles are huffing up the hills and screaming down them. Motorcycles are passing you at every opportunity, passing lane or not. Aggressive tailgaters honk if you’re impeding their path and somehow manage to not cause an accident on every turn, like this one:

The car that caused this was down at the bottom of the turn. No fatalities, but there were some injuries.

The road was closed for this massive near head-on collision and and even a helicopter was called. Thankfully after about 20 minutes they reopened one lane, and we were on our way. The roads were paved all the way to the parking spot, and were they not the poor Mustang would have had a bad day.

The Hike

The hike was a pretty easy trek up a closed service road that was covered in fallen trees and rock falls. The view was absolutely breathtaking in many spots. It was generally very easy, until we decided at the last mile to take the “shortcut” – an absolutely grueling 60% grade hike straight up the west side of the summit. Probably won’t do that again.

The Summit

Mountains are the most beautiful things on earth. They look pretty from all angles, and it makes the world seem so small on top. To the north we could see Palmdale and Lancaster, CA, and to the west we could see the edge of LA and the Pacific Ocean – that was a really unusual sight. Off in the distance, Catalina Island.

We were met by everyone else who reached the summit about 45 minutes before us. They were impressed by our decision to take the vertical way up, but I promise we weren’t doing it for show!

The Activation

This SOTA excursion almost felt like an Elecraft-sponsored field day. There were a half a dozen antennas, five Elecrafts, 8 operators, and zero noise. Almost everyone officially activated the summit (which reminds me, I need to submit my log!)

The bands were crap, as usual, and despite the signals we had on the mountain

I was very surprised to accomplish my activation entirely on 80m – not a typical band for SOTA. Since we were overnighting, it was a good band to try, and I barely squeezed in four QSOs in about 2 hours of calling CQ.

I woke up the next morning and got on 20m just before sunrise. I had a small run before handing it off to Kyle AAØZ.

The Camaraderie (and Whiskey)

Special thanks to everyone who came, and everyone who brought fine whiskeys. Matt AE4MQ flew all the way from Florida to hang out and brought “Pappy” (Pappy Van Winkle), a $120 per shot bourbon that tasted like pure gold. Everyone else brought their own variety, and not only did I learn a lot about backpacking and portable operation, but I also learned a lot about fine liquor and cigars!

Shout out to everyone who went:

A majority of the people who went were also YouTubers, so naturally they made videos of the expedition. On the flight home I made an EPIC trailer (using iMovie on my phone): https://youtu.be/bjVfgk-5ny0

I still cannot stop laughing at the silliness of this trailer.

Also, I curated a YouTube playlist of everyone else’s videos at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG8UQxewXrtZhzi5g-ZMmZtmpbFWODvbS: