Connecticut–Letter to Hams

I’m a candidate for re-election as the New England Division Director of the ARRL. Sometime around October 1^st, you will receive a ballot asking you to vote in the election, and I want your vote.

As you live in Connecticut, I thought I’d talk about Connecticut.

At the re-dedication of ARRL Headquarters, I had a chance to chat with the folks in this picture. While the photo of was scheduled for just a snapshot, it went over 25 minutes as we got into the subject of the need for antennas. If you want to influence legislatures, you meet with legislators. The work is not done schools.

Field Day 2021

Are you in any of these pictures with me at this year’s Field Day?

My past in Woodbury, Southbury, Stratford, and Farmington

As president of Channel One, I was the guy who ran the cable TV company serving Woodlake (Woodbury), Heritage Village (Southbury), Oronoque Village (Stratford), and Farmington Woods (Farmington). I retired from Channel One when we sold the company to what is now Comcast, but I did spend a lot of time in Connecticut building those systems, including towers and dishes, as well as marketing to residents. If you were one of my customers, I hope we served you well. If you’ve had any cable TV problems there since 1990 – not my fault!

New Haven and Farmington

My wife lived in New Haven for about six years, while getting her Ph.D. at Yale (psychopharmacology), and pursuing her M.D. at UConn’s Medical School in Farmington. Whenever we drive Route 95 in Southwest Connecticut, she insists that we stop to eat in New Haven – so that she can reminisce. Curiously, my wife and my sister overlapped some of their time in New Haven. My sister also got a Ph.D. (French Literature) at Yale. While I didn’t know my wife when my sister lived in New Haven, I used to visit my sister there often. I grew quite used to arguments about where to get the best pizza in New Haven. Would you like to contribute to that controversy? Actually though, I’d rather you suggest a restaurant we should try in New Haven that is not a pizza joint (as I want to stay married and my wife is not a pizza fan).

Other Work in CT

It was my pleasure to represent W1UK, of Coventry, in his case at the zoning board level. He’s a smart dude who created some great exhibits which proved to be very helpful in the case.  Despite opposition from neighbors, his permit was granted. It was covered by the Journal Inquirer at the time, if you’d like to read about it.

 For lack of space, and privacy reasons, I’m not mentioning my work for other radio hams in CT, in at least five other towns (but they never made the papers).  Bottom line:  I have Connecticut connections, and yes, you can invite me to your club – in person or by Zoom/WebEx. I want to hear from you.

And Now, Some ARRL Topics 

Here are some topics raised in the last election, and what happened since.

• The Amateur Radio Parity Act. In the last election, this issue was very much alive. My position was that ARPA was a giant mistake. And I worked very hard to get the Board to withdraw support for this proposed federal law. I published articles and lobbied other Board members. They agreed, and the bill was pulled by its sponsor. Recall that, as drafted, if you have a camp near a lake and you’re a member of a road association (an organization formed only to plow the roads and collect garbage) you’d have to get prior approval from the road association before you could erect an antenna. I’ve spent hundreds of hours as a co-author of a replacement bill. The bill should be “dropped” (introduced) any day now, but until then the language is being withheld, until we know what the appropriate Congressional committee will approve.

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

My past in Woodbury, Southbury, Stratford, and Farmington

As president of Channel One, I was the guy who ran the cable TV company serving Woodlake (Woodbury), Heritage Village (Southbury), Oronoque Village (Stratford), and Farmington Woods (Farmington). I retired from Channel One when we sold the company to what is now Comcast, but I did spend a lot of time in Connecticut building those systems, including towers and dishes, as well as marketing to residents. If you were one of my customers, I hope we served you well. If you’ve had any cable TV problems there since 1990 – not my fault!

New Haven and Farmington

My wife lived in New Haven for about six years, while getting her Ph.D. at Yale (psychopharmacology), and pursuing her M.D. at UConn’s Medical School in Farmington. Whenever we drive Route 95 in Southwest Connecticut, she insists that we stop to eat in New Haven – so that she can reminisce. Curiously, my wife and my sister overlapped some of their time in New Haven. My sister also got a Ph.D. (French Literature) at Yale. While I didn’t know my wife when my sister lived in New Haven, I used to visit my sister there often. I grew quite used to arguments about where to get the best pizza in New Haven. Would you like to contribute to that controversy? Actually though, I’d rather you suggest a restaurant we should try in New Haven that is not a pizza joint (as I want to stay married and my wife is not a pizza fan).

Other Work in CT

It was my pleasure to represent W1UK, of Coventry, in his case at the zoning board level. He’s a smart dude who created some great exhibits which proved to be very helpful in the case.  Despite opposition from neighbors, his permit was granted. It was covered by the Journal Inquirer at the time, if you’d like to read about it.

For lack of space, and privacy reasons, I’m not mentioning my work for other radio hams in CT, in at least five other towns (but they never made the papers).  Bottom line:  I have Connecticut connections, and yes, you can invite me to your club – in person or by Zoom/WebEx. I want to hear from you.

And Now, Some ARRL Topics 

Here are some topics raised in the last election, and what happened since.

• The Amateur Radio Parity Act. In the last election, this issue was very much alive. My position was that ARPA was a giant mistake. And I worked very hard to get the Board to withdraw support for this proposed federal law. I published articles and lobbied other Board members. They agreed, and the bill was pulled by its sponsor. Recall that, as drafted, if you have a camp near a lake and you’re a member of a road association (an organization formed only to plow the roads and collect garbage) you’d have to get prior approval from the road association before you could erect an antenna. I’ve spent hundreds of hours as a co-author of a replacement bill. The bill should be “dropped” (introduced) any day now, but until then the language is being withheld, until we know what the appropriate Congressional committee will approve.

• My ARRL Voice. As a founder of MAV, I worked to change the composition of the Board. Of five candidates we put forward in 2018, we elected four – ending a period of infighting and retribution by replacing four “old school” Board Members.

• Elections Rules. Matters concerning candidates for director or vice-director of the ARRL have been considered “personnel matters” and are discussed behind closed doors. The result is that candidates have been wrongly disqualified. And in the past it has been almost impossible to understand what really happened and why. Do you think candidates for office should be disqualified for reasons we may never know? Or do you think the voters should decide?

• Standing Orders. The ARRL Board of Directors Standing Orders have been secret for decades. I figured out that each one of them was created by a Board meeting minute, subsequently published, and that there was therefore no reason at all for them to be hidden behind a secrecy wall, available only to officers, directors, and vice directors. So I published them, after deleting the 119 standing Orders that had been withdrawn by subsequent Board action. But they were still in chronological order, and hard to figure out. So, with the help of K1DCA, I published them a second time, but this time grouped by subject. They can be found at https://nediv.arrl.org/2021/07/21/arrl-board-of-directors-standing-orders-organized-by-subject/ 
• Life Long Learning. This summer, I contributed to the ARRL LLL program by recording a six-part series on antenna zoning. Here’s what the start of Part One looks like:

You may access the series starting at https://www.gotostage.com/channel/d8ea15d6ea99464e8ec08c33d7e1e3e5/recording/989509baacfc4ff3b14d38c915d9e17e/watch?source=CHANNEL

• Teleconferencing. Last time around I wrote: “In this modern day, when teleconferencing is easy and inexpensive, should teleconferencing be used in-between full Board meetings?” That query sort of fell into the Board’s lap. When Covid-19 appeared, as I was ahead of the curve, I suggested we should buy Zoom licenses, as did others, and it was done. That was easy.

• The CAC.Last time around, I suggested that we need to examine why some advisory committee decisions were being rejected. Today, the new Board members have agreed that more deference should be given to advisory committee opinions. When W1UE resigned, I appointed N2WQ, of Westport, CT. He is also VE3EAD and HQ9X. He will be a great addition. 

• DC Lunch Bunch. On behalf of the ARRL Legislative Action Committee, I created the DC Lunch Bunch, a private lunch with influential Washington types who work at Wiley Rein, NTIA, DHS, FEMA, FCC and so forth. Unfortunately, after meeting in 2019, Covid-19 cut off meetings scheduled to occur in 2020 and 2021. As these are “listening sessions,” designed to open up lines of communications with friends and allies, we intend to resume them as soon as possible.

• ARRL Dues. Before my time on the Board, the ARRL raised dues and raised some fees.  I asked: “Are there other strategies that should be tried?” Since I’ve been on the Board, we kept the annual dues constant, and you now get four magazines instead of one – a terrific value. I banded together with a few other Board members to create a motion that instructs staff to consider more sources of advertising (think: Harbor Freight, but not Depends). Plus, my plan to raise money with better management of our endowment should further delay any dues increase. 

• ARRL Membership.Since I joined the Board, the decline in ARRL membership has been reduced. I introduced a motion to examine member benefits, a process that is underway now. And I’ve introduced the idea that the problem is not encouraging more folks to get an amateur radio license, but rather the problem is “conversion,” converting more new hams into members, and getting them on the air.  

• Investment Management Committee. Reading the back pages of the ARRL Annual report, I discovered that the ARRL has an endowment of ~$40 million, and it has been managed for at least 40 years by ONE GUY, basically unsupervised. We’ve been lucky. They were good, honest, CPAs. But the supervision by the ARRL Board’s Administration & Finance Committee was superficial, because Board members generally have little or no experience in investment management. I created a position paper that convinced the Board to create an Investment Management Committee (IMC). The IMC will recommend a professional money management team to the full Board in January 2022. It’s your money, and we’re supposed to take care of it. I’m making that happen. The result?  We will be able to afford to what we need to do to advance Amateur Radio for us and the next generation.

As you can learn from my questions about various issues, I have opinions about how things are working at the ARRL Board level. What’s important to understand is that the ARRL is not a larger version of a local club. It has governance, money, personnel, and all sorts of issues with 157,000 members that you don’t have at 50-300 members. 

You can learn more on my campaign web page, www.Hams4NewEngland.org . I hope you have the confidence to vote from me again.  Seek me out at NEAR-fest, if you’d like to chat. I’ll have a table.

The previous Director was in office for just short of forever (it was over 20 years), and I thought it was time for a change. By contrast, I promise that I won’t hold the office for 20 years.

Please cast your vote when the paper ballot arrives for Fred Hopengarten, K1VR.

73,