Steve, There seems to be a little more to this story and from what little I can gather, it's not as one sided as it may at first glance seem. I still don't think that the league's directors acted in a way that was consistent with forwarding the hobby. But there seem to be other allegations that may or may not shed some light on the politics of the Hudson Division, but I don't know if these were reactionary or if it was endemic to N2RJ's term as director. There was a change.org petition that was spawned from this incident or incidents. I myself don't really have a dog in the fight. But I'd love to know what the whole story is. Just throwing in my 2 cents, I think you steer clear of politics for good reason on this newsletter and it would probably be a good idea not to deviate from that initial feeling.
John - The sole reason for raising this issue... among many political issues within US Amateur Radio is that it had direct bearing on one of the core interests of US Amateur Radio. That is, whether Amateur Radio will attract younger folks, and one of their values is diversity and inclusivity, to which the ARRL seems mostly oblivious. I did say that in my initial mentions of the N2RJ affair that she wasn't blameless... but the ARRL Board (and apparently, the ARRL CEO) didn't have to pick this fight. But they did, and as happens in fights, sometimes the initiator of the fight loses, and sometimes they lose big, as happened in this case. 'Nuff said.
Philadelphia Community Chat? Can you share your source or a public link? I'm in Philly. I belong to five local ham clubs and the local computer club and read all the email lists and this is the first I've heard of it. 73 de K3FZT / Steve
Apologies for the confusion; this is one complication of multiple versions of Zero Retries and one of the reasons I'll be "dialing back" Zero Retries to one newsletter per week.
Another continent, same problems! I also have quite some problems with the politics within our German society DARC. For example I tried to bring to attention to the forces there are that our magazine is edited very badly. I have earned my money for more than 30 years with quite similar work, I exactly know what I am talking about. What happened was that I was forced to remove much of my criticism from my Web site. One thing is sure: cqDL, like QST, is the most important connection between the society and the members. If members think that only engineers can understand a large portion of the content and the rest is irrelevant anyhow, why should you remain a member? I just got my diploma for 50 years of membership in DARC. But there is primarily a single cause that keeps me there: We need representation in politics, creating of technical standards etc. This representation must have as many people behind it as possible. As I see it, ham radio in Germany is much less established as it might be in other countries.
Alexander - there's a counter-example to be made for remaining a member in a dysfunctional organization. If you "stay in", the things that the organization is doing is, in tiny part, in YOUR name. By stepping out of the organiztion, you're saying "Not in MY name are you doing these things". Seriously, if N2RJ gave up trying to influence ARRL from a position of leadership, to me, that spoke volumes that ARRL leadership is beyond influence of individual members. I engaged my ARRL Division Director one-on-one via email, and it did no good - he was not swayed or influenced by my arguments. So, there's little point.
As to technical standards... ARRL was involved once upon a time in Amateur Radio standards (such as the creation of AX.25), but they have long since abandoned such a role in Amateur Radio. In fairness, ARRL no longer (in my opinion) has the technical depth to do so. That's a small reason (not worth noting in Request To Send) I won't renew my ARRL membership and will instead rejoin TAPR and AMSAT (and continue to be involved as a "civilian" in ARDC). If there is standards work to be done, it will be done by organizations like those (that have technical depth), not ARRL.
Stan - Thanks for that. I corrected it and gave you credit for Digital Dimension which was another, now sadly gone, column in QST that was consistently Zero Retries Interesting.
About "technical standards": I did not think about AX.25 or other ham radio stuff. I talk about official industry standards, especially the EMC aspects of these.
For example Powerline (or how on your side of the pond the standard to transmit Ethernet signals over the power cabling of a house is called): Here in Germany the shortwave amateur bands must be notched, slightly reducing the capacity of these systems. DARC has a few very engaged people that often have spent much of their professional life with creating such standards. For example Powerline units sold in OE need not be notched.
There is a "round table amateur radio" where all bodies involved with administrative topics around our hobby meet. That starts with several ham radio societies, coordinated by DARC, and includes among others Bundesnetzagentur (our "FCC"), federal government and even German military. The military for example is extremely important for any advances on the 6m band as we are secondary users in the military band 47-68 MHz.
There are also examples what happens when the radio amateurs have no voice that is heard, especially in Scandinavia: In OZ, LA, SM and OH the 70cm amateur radio band is only 6 MHz wide, 432-438 MHz, which created a terrible mess: Relays must use a 1.6 MHz offset, sometimes up and sometimes down. They cannot help but operate relay uplinks in the ISM band!
In OH, two years ago the complete 23cm band disappeared, officially because of the Galileo navigation system. This could have been solved better: SW of Munich, in Oberpfaffenhofen, is one of the command stations for the Galileo system. We had to shut off a few 23cm relays in the Munich area, but otherwise still can use 1,2 GHz.
Alexander - You raise a good point for the need of Amateur Radio to have competent representation for "official industry standards". My observation of the ARRL is that it is "missing in action" for such a role. While ARRL purports to "protect Amateur Radio", what passes for that role in the past decade or so is merely to "assemble pitchforks" in response to unpopular changes in US Amateur Radio. ARRL is no longer proactive, it's solely REactive.
The most recent example of the ARRL's dysfunctional representation of US Amateur Radio was detailed in Zero Retries 0078 - US Legislation Proposed to Force FCC to Replace Symbol Limit on HF with 2.8 kHz Bandwidth Limit - https://zeroretries.substack.com/i/90014902/us-legislation-proposed-to-force-fcc-to-replace-symbol-limit-on-hf-with-khz-bandwidth-limit. As I detail, the ARRL "spent its political capital" ONLY trying to get the symbol limit on the HF bands changed, ignoring the now-idiotic symbol rate limitations demonstrably hampering Amateur Radio data communications on VHF and UHF bands.
Thus I have little concern that my lack of support for the ARRL will result in worse representation than US Amateur Radio has at present. The (current) ARRL isn't competently representing the best interests of US Amateur Radio... especially the future of US Amateur Radio, and I've finally decided to no longer lend my name, nor my future dues / subscription fees, to the ARRL's dysfunction.
Steve, There seems to be a little more to this story and from what little I can gather, it's not as one sided as it may at first glance seem. I still don't think that the league's directors acted in a way that was consistent with forwarding the hobby. But there seem to be other allegations that may or may not shed some light on the politics of the Hudson Division, but I don't know if these were reactionary or if it was endemic to N2RJ's term as director. There was a change.org petition that was spawned from this incident or incidents. I myself don't really have a dog in the fight. But I'd love to know what the whole story is. Just throwing in my 2 cents, I think you steer clear of politics for good reason on this newsletter and it would probably be a good idea not to deviate from that initial feeling.
John - The sole reason for raising this issue... among many political issues within US Amateur Radio is that it had direct bearing on one of the core interests of US Amateur Radio. That is, whether Amateur Radio will attract younger folks, and one of their values is diversity and inclusivity, to which the ARRL seems mostly oblivious. I did say that in my initial mentions of the N2RJ affair that she wasn't blameless... but the ARRL Board (and apparently, the ARRL CEO) didn't have to pick this fight. But they did, and as happens in fights, sometimes the initiator of the fight loses, and sometimes they lose big, as happened in this case. 'Nuff said.
Philadelphia Community Chat? Can you share your source or a public link? I'm in Philly. I belong to five local ham clubs and the local computer club and read all the email lists and this is the first I've heard of it. 73 de K3FZT / Steve
Steven - My reference to "Philadelphia Community Chat" was a created name for the potential future network that I discussed in Zero Retries 0093 BEACON Edition - Help Build a Wireless, Solar-powered Chat Network in Philadelphia - https://zeroretries.substack.com/i/111700376/help-build-a-wireless-solar-powered-chat-network-in-philadelphia.
Apologies for the confusion; this is one complication of multiple versions of Zero Retries and one of the reasons I'll be "dialing back" Zero Retries to one newsletter per week.
Another continent, same problems! I also have quite some problems with the politics within our German society DARC. For example I tried to bring to attention to the forces there are that our magazine is edited very badly. I have earned my money for more than 30 years with quite similar work, I exactly know what I am talking about. What happened was that I was forced to remove much of my criticism from my Web site. One thing is sure: cqDL, like QST, is the most important connection between the society and the members. If members think that only engineers can understand a large portion of the content and the rest is irrelevant anyhow, why should you remain a member? I just got my diploma for 50 years of membership in DARC. But there is primarily a single cause that keeps me there: We need representation in politics, creating of technical standards etc. This representation must have as many people behind it as possible. As I see it, ham radio in Germany is much less established as it might be in other countries.
Alexander - there's a counter-example to be made for remaining a member in a dysfunctional organization. If you "stay in", the things that the organization is doing is, in tiny part, in YOUR name. By stepping out of the organiztion, you're saying "Not in MY name are you doing these things". Seriously, if N2RJ gave up trying to influence ARRL from a position of leadership, to me, that spoke volumes that ARRL leadership is beyond influence of individual members. I engaged my ARRL Division Director one-on-one via email, and it did no good - he was not swayed or influenced by my arguments. So, there's little point.
As to technical standards... ARRL was involved once upon a time in Amateur Radio standards (such as the creation of AX.25), but they have long since abandoned such a role in Amateur Radio. In fairness, ARRL no longer (in my opinion) has the technical depth to do so. That's a small reason (not worth noting in Request To Send) I won't renew my ARRL membership and will instead rejoin TAPR and AMSAT (and continue to be involved as a "civilian" in ARDC). If there is standards work to be done, it will be done by organizations like those (that have technical depth), not ARRL.
Hi Steve – A correction: Don writes Digital Connection for CQ. I wrote Digital Dimension for QST many eons ago. – 73 DE WA1LOU
Stan - Thanks for that. I corrected it and gave you credit for Digital Dimension which was another, now sadly gone, column in QST that was consistently Zero Retries Interesting.
About "technical standards": I did not think about AX.25 or other ham radio stuff. I talk about official industry standards, especially the EMC aspects of these.
For example Powerline (or how on your side of the pond the standard to transmit Ethernet signals over the power cabling of a house is called): Here in Germany the shortwave amateur bands must be notched, slightly reducing the capacity of these systems. DARC has a few very engaged people that often have spent much of their professional life with creating such standards. For example Powerline units sold in OE need not be notched.
There is a "round table amateur radio" where all bodies involved with administrative topics around our hobby meet. That starts with several ham radio societies, coordinated by DARC, and includes among others Bundesnetzagentur (our "FCC"), federal government and even German military. The military for example is extremely important for any advances on the 6m band as we are secondary users in the military band 47-68 MHz.
There are also examples what happens when the radio amateurs have no voice that is heard, especially in Scandinavia: In OZ, LA, SM and OH the 70cm amateur radio band is only 6 MHz wide, 432-438 MHz, which created a terrible mess: Relays must use a 1.6 MHz offset, sometimes up and sometimes down. They cannot help but operate relay uplinks in the ISM band!
In OH, two years ago the complete 23cm band disappeared, officially because of the Galileo navigation system. This could have been solved better: SW of Munich, in Oberpfaffenhofen, is one of the command stations for the Galileo system. We had to shut off a few 23cm relays in the Munich area, but otherwise still can use 1,2 GHz.
Do you understand why this is important to me?
Alexander - You raise a good point for the need of Amateur Radio to have competent representation for "official industry standards". My observation of the ARRL is that it is "missing in action" for such a role. While ARRL purports to "protect Amateur Radio", what passes for that role in the past decade or so is merely to "assemble pitchforks" in response to unpopular changes in US Amateur Radio. ARRL is no longer proactive, it's solely REactive.
The most recent example of the ARRL's dysfunctional representation of US Amateur Radio was detailed in Zero Retries 0078 - US Legislation Proposed to Force FCC to Replace Symbol Limit on HF with 2.8 kHz Bandwidth Limit - https://zeroretries.substack.com/i/90014902/us-legislation-proposed-to-force-fcc-to-replace-symbol-limit-on-hf-with-khz-bandwidth-limit. As I detail, the ARRL "spent its political capital" ONLY trying to get the symbol limit on the HF bands changed, ignoring the now-idiotic symbol rate limitations demonstrably hampering Amateur Radio data communications on VHF and UHF bands.
Thus I have little concern that my lack of support for the ARRL will result in worse representation than US Amateur Radio has at present. The (current) ARRL isn't competently representing the best interests of US Amateur Radio... especially the future of US Amateur Radio, and I've finally decided to no longer lend my name, nor my future dues / subscription fees, to the ARRL's dysfunction.