Problems at ARRL?

[coppercone2]

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/10/06/0356254/its-ham-vsham-as-radio-amateurs-are-in-conflict-at-arrl

What do you guys think of this?

[rgarnett1923]

I'm not a HAM operator, but it sounds like some corporate "elites" are trying to take over the ARRL so they can monetize it.  A bit like Nacy Vos and charter schools.  To corporate parasites, the ARRL would have "brand salience" and could be worth a lot of money in the wrong hands.

[boB]

I understand that this issue was from several months ago and they're taking care of the problem.

Someone wanted to kinda make it their own empire.  One of the board members objected publicly that he didn't
like how things were going and got chastised for that by the others.  All hell broke loose and lots of letters back
and forth etc...

The members evidently were to have none of it ?   I'm not a member although I think I approve of the outfit.

boB

[coppercone2]

the main cash flow in commercialization would be to make the spectrum so that certain protocols can be effectively forced. i.e. bandwithes and power levels

How does that even work? Are there radio protocols that if you decide to implement a language you can be forced to pay someone money?

or is it a one time thing forcing a sudden migration to recently developed hardware and programs that currently exist only commercially and are not popular? (but how could this even be a thing with SDR? amplifier bandwidth?)

[jh15]

No info about they hiring a public relations firm to study why membership is poor? Surveymonky could do it.

Or a company in their back yard to make an improved website page for half a million dollars? And the ARRL would have to provide the content.

Sounds like someone is or has a family member around there.

I became a life member in the '70s. Otherwise I would not renew each year for the price of a Baofeng.

Right after paying, they dropped most technical content into QEX.

So I get ads and political no-doings instead of the tech I was expecting to get.

[ikrase]

The ARRL was never terribly interesting to me, with their almost exclusive focus on types of HAM that I don't do. (what I do do: build my own antennas and ragchew with a VHF HT, fantasize about getting my general license but never actually do it).  I finally got angry at them when they wrote a hack job attacking the use of HAM radio communications with drones.

The frustrating thing is, there's actually a lot of abuse of spectrum and especially unlicensed operation in the world of drones, which is what they were criticizing! (Though I've never heard of somebody who wasn't another drone flyer complaining about interference that they could convincingly attribute to drones). However, the ARRL article was needlessly hostile and assumed that there is no reason for drone flyers to do anything with HAM ever, and totally ignored the existence of drone flyers who have HAM licenses and operate within the HAM rules!

[coppercone2]

I find flying repeaters very interesting so you can make a temporary high bandwidth good reception area using a bunch of repeater drones to allow some other kind of drone to work in a large area (like search and rescue with streaming HD camera to scan the woods for lost people).

Like a buncha heavy slow drones acting as aerial nodes to give a large area coverage so some faster drones hooked up with advanced sensors that have very high bandwidth can do a grid search or something.

The whole HAM thing is sorta aimed at helping in disasters and such.. finding lost people in the high wilderness fits the bill IMO. Better sensors and more bandwidths means you can look in a greater area for a long period of time and find small clues/evidence of recent human activity.

Also could be used for S&R to find small shit, possibly even with volunteer remote operators (pieces of airplane wreckage floating in water).

What you describe their behavior as towards drones is extremely short sighted even with their narrow goals.

[Johncanfield]

Politics aside, the ARRL is the big dog advocating for our radio spectrum. Squabbling happens in EVERY organization.  I will remain a remember.

73 de John WB5THT

[tkamiya]

I've been a ham for last 35 years.  Started as JF2DKG and came to US; then, became a KB4EMF. 

I don't remember a time when ARRL wasn't involved in some kind of dispute.  I was a member from time to time but an only benefit I really enjoyed was its publications. 

I'm mostly involved in experimentation.  What ARRL does really does not affect what I do, nor do I need it to do what I do.  ONAIR time was only for me to prove my new creation work to myself.  I remember I had different antenna up every week.

I have no time for someone's personal agenda disguised as representation of US hams.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

Amateur radio is still a thing? What else? Whale oil lamps?

[bd139]

Any significantly large cluster of humans tends to self organise into chaos, especially ones run by old men I've noticed.  Hell I know someone who quit a club after an argument over dinner arrangements one day that went on for 4 years.  I don't get it myself but surely par for the course?

Then again at least your lot are trying to move in the right direction. We just got some crap t-shirts to divide us further: https://www.rsgbshop.org/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_RSGB_27.html .... note the sizes they stock as well 

[CJay]

Any significantly large cluster of humans tends to self organise into chaos, especially ones run by old men I've noticed.  Hell I know someone who quit a club after an argument over dinner arrangements one day that went on for 4 years.  I don't get it myself but surely par for the course?

Then again at least your lot are trying to move in the right direction. We just got some crap t-shirts to divide us further: https://www.rsgbshop.org/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_RSGB_27.html .... note the sizes they stock as well 

Well if they're going to follow that line then I'll not bother renewing. The RSGB and its mailing list is full of miserable old farts who regard anything newer than spark gap as an abomination agains the spirit of ham radio. (may be slightly exaggerating)

[bd139]

I suspect you aren’t exaggerating there. I haven’t even signed up as an RSGB memeber yet...

[Bud]

Amateur radio is still a thing? What else? Whale oil lamps?

You have no clue what you are talking about, do you.

[bd139]

Don’t feed the trolls

[chris_leyson]

The RSGB and its mailing list is full of miserable old farts who regard anything newer than spark gap as an abomination agains the spirit of ham radio. (may be slightly exaggerating)

I think that's probably not to far from the truth. I see what you mean about the crap t-shirts 
I let my licence lapse decades ago but might take it up again as some of the digital modes might be worth looking into. Then again how much of the software is open source and where is the documentation for the modulation and encoding ?

[bd139]

It’s all open source: https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html (see bottom) and cross platform.

Protocol specs: http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx-doc/wsjtx-main-1.7.1-devel.html#PROTOCOLS

And there’s stuff like this round the corner: https://www.qrp-labs.com/qsx.html

Screw old fart radio. This stuff is golden.

[CJay]

It’s all open source: https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html (see bottom) and cross platform.

Protocol specs: http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx-doc/wsjtx-main-1.7.1-devel.html#PROTOCOLS

And there’s stuff like this round the corner: https://www.qrp-labs.com/qsx.html

Screw old fart radio. This stuff is golden.

Absolutely, there's also JS8Call (previously FT8Call) which allows conversation using an extension to the protocol of FT8, it's in beta with new releases almost weekly, there are mutterings of a conversational variant of FT8 from Franke, Taylor (the F and T of FT8) in dvelopment.

Don;t mention it in the  presence of RSGB members, it provokes all sorts of frothing at the mouth but if you want a giggle have a look at the RSGB technical forum where my mention of FT8Call prodced the admission from one person that amateur radio wasn't about being polite and pleasant to strangers.

[PhilipPeake]

You see this sort of problem in any organization that claims to represent people interested in any topic.
ARRL, RSGB or NRA (I am member of all).

They all take themselves much too seriously, and get way out of touch with the membership.
They grow to the point of needing full time staff, then begins the empire building and "compromise", to say nothing of the "Fudd factor".

[coppercone2]

why are they so hesitant to adopt all this new technology?

is it a barrier to entry that is lowered? different spectrum usage patterns that are some how unfavorable?

I typically lost most interests in electronics once it deviates from electric theory or reliability etc.

[chris_leyson]

Nice one bd139 thanks for the links  Screw old fart radio, I can get away that because I am an old fart. The whole point of amateur radio is "a station that is operated for the purposes of self-training in radiocommunications". The new digital modes work really well especially when you have very poor SNR, they teach you about coding and error correction and they have a lot going for them. It's definately a step in the right direction for amateur radio.

If you put "amateur radio operator" on your CV you would want it look good rather than the interviewers thinking "oh, one of those" and the CV goes straight into the bin. Amatuer radio has a long way to go to tidy up it's image.

Talking of QRN, man made interference, I found another source, not switched mode power supplies but my broadband cable connection. Will have to fix the Chase HFR2000 EMC receiver and do a measurement with a ferrite clamp but I don't think fixing the receiver is going to happen any time soon. Oddly enough, yesterday evening there were some guys stuffing cable up the pavement so I asked if it was for power or broadband and said no it's for fibre to the premises, can't wait.

[jmelson]

The RSGB and its mailing list is full of miserable old farts who regard anything newer than spark gap as an abomination agains the spirit of ham radio. (may be slightly exaggerating)

I think that's probably not to far from the truth. I see what you mean about the crap t-shirts 
I let my licence lapse decades ago but might take it up again as some of the digital modes might be worth looking into. Then again how much of the software is open source and where is the documentation for the modulation and encoding ?

These digital modes are quite amazing.  I have a crap antenna, and the cheapest SDR receiver and HF converter.  If I can JUST BARELY detect a sequence of tones, then I can decode the message at close to 100%.  I'm totally AMAZED at how well this stuff works!  If the S/N ratio is some 20 dB below what can be decoded with RTTY or Morse, I can read the digital modes quite well.

Jon

[bd139]

These digital modes are quite amazing.  I have a crap antenna, and the cheapest SDR receiver and HF converter.  If I can JUST BARELY detect a sequence of tones, then I can decode the message at close to 100%.  I'm totally AMAZED at how well this stuff works!  If the S/N ratio is some 20 dB below what can be decoded with RTTY or Morse, I can read the digital modes quite well.

Yes indeed. It's amazing how good it is. I like WSPR as a test tool. I am rather enthusiastic about it actually (opposite to the grumpy lot!). When I put my last antenna up, a simple homebrew dipole with balun, I didn't bother tuning it just cutting it about right. I didn't have an SWR meter believe it or not. Got it up and transmitted down it and the TX's auto ATU matched it fine. Left it at that as I was tired. Didn't bother trying to make any contacts. Got up next morning and plugged my QCX into it. Like I said didn't have an SWR meter at all then so "winged it".

First WSPR transmission:



Nearly fell on my butt. Went out in the garden about an hour after that success and found that the antenna had actually half collapsed. Put it back up and lived with it and the auto tuner for a bit. Then I got an MFJ941 tuner and tuned it up properly. Turned out it was resonant at around 7.9MHz, way off band and SWR was awful (explaining the excessively warm QCX). Also I found the QCX had lost a BS170 at some point so was only kicking out about 0.7W.

So crap propagation, crap half collapsed antenna, poorly tuned antenna, half stuck in a tree, 700mW power, a 15m RG58 feed line and all those spots. Digimodes rock!

[coppercone2]

that's pretty impressive for such a half ass setup.

Why do people hate on the digimodes?? 700mW for across the atlantic seems really impressive for me

[bd139]

Gatekeeping is why.