Tag: yarc

A New Discord Server for Young Radio Amateurs

Join the YARC Discord here: https://discord.gg/MpQJadu

Suffice it to say, the Young Amateurs Radio Club experienced a split. From my experience, every ham radio club will experience a split in it’s lifetime. It seems to be the natural order of things.

The original YARC board met with the former YARC president (who owned the server and banned key members of the board) for several weeks of mediation and reconciliation, but ultimately no compromise could be met.

From out of the ashes, a phoenix shall rise.

The original YARC board regathered, lost interest in saving the old server, and created a new server. The old server still exists, but it’s down to a fraction of it’s activity and is being ran by the former YARC president has been deleted by the former YARC president.

The new YARC Discord server is now active, it’s just as busy as before, and it’s members are coming up with new activities to get back into the swing of things before the ‘event.’ It is open, friendly, inclusive, and has no tolerance for bullying and harmful trolling.

I left a parting message on the old server that read as follows:

Hello.

This message will probably get deleted and I will probably get banned in record time, but it doesn’t hurt to try to get a message out. 

This server is a husk of its former glory that’s lost it’s vision, it’s leadership, and it’s heart. You may have noticed a lot of people have gotten banned, kicked, and had their messages deleted due to disparaging this server or linking to the new YARC server. This is because the server owner has been lurking trying to control the exodus of members while forming it into his own brand after the banning and de-perming of the YARC Board members. 

 I couldn’t be happier if it was to blossom into a vibrant young ham community. But at the end of the day, this isn’t YARC. 

But given it’s an inactive server being led by questionable ethics and obscurity, I recommend the new YARC server that is being ran by the OG YARC founders, board and members. Go to https://discord.gg/MpQJadu if you want a healthy, active, inclusive, and lively server ran by fellow young hams who truly have your best interests at heart. 

To avoid confusion of newcomers looking for the YARC server, I deleted several invite links to draw in new members from across the internet. Since the server has changed in many ways, those invite links aren’t valid anymore. I can’t tell which links were created after the change in leadership, and what version of the server went to which invite link, so I removed all but the owner’s personal invite link.

I would still like to serve as liaison between Young Hams and the rest of the amateur radio world (as I’ve always done) and a mediator between our two communities. 

message edited to redact names

73, N0SSC

PS: To KZØP- Jesten and I are forever grateful for the Reese’s pumpkins, but I ran out 🙁 but thankfully it’s Easter so Reeses Eggs have flooded the market 🙂

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?

YARC Youth Contesting Program Round Two: IARU HF Championships

YARC’s Youth Contesting Program is back in action for the IARU HF Championships. Signup now!

YARC’s Youth Contesting Program (YCP) is a weekend program for groups of young amateur radio contesters throughout the US and Canada to meet up at a nearby-as-possible contest-grade stations during the large HF contests.

Our previous YCP was somewhat successful, in that we didn’t entirely fail – we had one successful and rewarding pairing between Patrick KE8KLC and the Voice of America Museum Amateur Radio Club WC8VOA. It helped that he was only a 15 minute drive away, and that the VOA volunteers pulled in a lot of hours preparing for the event. Our biggest pitfall was a low number of both host station and youth contesters. There’s only one way to get more applicants, and that’s to try it again!

The 2019 IARU HF Championships take place 13-14 July 2019 from 1200 Saturday to 1159 Sunday UTC. It’s both a CW and Phone contest, and is one of the years biggest.

It works like this – we will attempt to pair a small group (up to 4) of young contesters interested in operating with a “big gun” station owner interested in hosting the youth group. The contesters will operate from the station, and the host has the option to help the youth improve their skills, provide advice, and even operate alongside. We will try to keep it such that young hams will only require a relatively short drive (ideally no more than 5 hours) to keep travel costs low. As such, this will require the participation of as many operators and hosts as possible, but it might so happen that a valid match may not exist. With your help, it shouldn’t be hard to find pairings within an hour’s drive.

All you have to do right now is signup! If you’re a young ham (or know a young ham) (under age 27 or so) with at least a little bit of contesting experience, and you’d be interested in spending a weekend in July at a contest-grade ham radio station, OR if you’re the owner of such a station, sign up at the Google form here: https://yarc.world/ycp/ or scroll down to the bottom to find the form there.

YARC YCP is inspired by the efforts of YOTA’s YCP, as well as Team Exuberance and we hope to inspire a big chunk of young hams into becoming the greatest contesters of the 21st century.

Note – since we’re trying to keep this an affordable event for our young ops, we require that the station is within a 3 hour drive. And since the North America is a big place, we can’t promise that you’ll be selected as a host or operator, especially if either no young ops signup nearby your station or there’s no station near young operators. Since this is our first second try, we probably still have a lot to learn about this, so bear with us!

Thanks,

Sterling, NØSSC
YARC Programs & Outreach Dude