November 2023
Hello, Oregon!
I appreciate the opportunity to be able to write to all ARRL members in the Oregon section. I am available to be at your club meetings, either remotely or in-person (within reason), and am happy to answer questions, take comments, and take complaints.
SCHOLARSHIPS
ARRL Foundation scholarship season is open. Now is the time to complete those scholarship applications, get your recommendation letters, and request transcripts. It’s important to note that even if you’re “not a kid,” but you’re pursuing higher education, you may be eligible for some of the scholarships offered.
https://www.arrl.org/scholarship-program
CONTESTS
Contest season is in full swing. Contests are a great chance to work on awards (WAS, WAC, WAZ, DXCC, and more), push your equipment and antennas to their limits, and develop your operating skills. It’s a great chance to ask an Elmer to teach you, too.
If you hate contests; that’s your prerogative. Fortunately, there are bands (60, 30, 17, and 12 meters) where contests aren’t permitted. And let’s not forget that there are a LOT of operating modes available to us. This may actually work to your benefit. For example, if there’s a worldwide RTTY contest going on, there are fewer people on FT8, CW, and SSB, so your desired operating band may be less crowded than usual.
ELMERING
Several other experienced hams and I recently (yesterday) worked with a 17 year old ham, coaching her through her first ARRL Sweepstakes SSB contest. She is an officer in a brand new school club, and was the first to use the club’s recently assigned callsign, W0AXE. She had never been on the HF bands, and everything was new to her, including how to tune in an SSB signal, how, when, and why you should rotate an antenna, adjusting mic gain, using a foot pedal and headset, understanding band edges, telling the difference between who’s calling CQ and who’s answering, how to call CQ, how to answer a CQ, when and why to use phonetics, how an exchange works, and how to initiate a contact.
The act of opening up your station, and transferring your knowledge and enthusiasm to others, is a perfect example of being an Elmer.
Those of us who have been hams for a long time may forget what it felt like to know absolutely nothing, or next to nothing. When you offer your services to a new ham, and you get to see an “AH HA!” moment, it can cause flashbacks. Elmering can help create a confident, capable, and skilled ham radio operator.
The great thing, of course, is seeing someone go from “zero” to “I’ve got this” in a few short hours. You can literally feel their confidence level rise, as they begin to take control, asking you fewer and fewer questions, knowing when to confidently key the radio and speak into the mic, and knowing exactly what to say.
VOLUNTEER POSITIONS
We have been looking for volunteers to provide services within the ARRL Oregon section’s field organization.
https://www.arrl.org/field-organization
We have appointed a Section Emergency Coordinator and five Assistant SECs, populated five of six District EC positions, and are working closely with Oregon Office of Emergency Management. We also have 36 counties within Oregon, running the gamut from “lots of emcomm activity,” to “none.’
There are many opportunities for those who want to participate in emergency communications. Many areas have active emcomm groups, and it’s easy to find one to join. Others, which have no active emcomm groups, are ripe for creation of new ones.
Many of our newest ham operators are interested in emcomm – but many of them are probably not reading this message. If emcomm is important to you, let’s work to reach out and find the new hams in your area, and tell them there’s a place for them.
While ARRL membership is not required for emcomm participation, ARRL can help to provide training.
We are actively looking for an Affiliated Club Coordinator, the primary contact and resource person for each Amateur Radio club in the section, specializing in motivating, providing assistance and coordinating joint activities of radio clubs.
http://www.arrl.org/affiliated-club-coordinator
ARRL MEMBERSHIP
As an ARRL member, ARRL provides many services that I personally feel are very valuable and far too numerous to enumerate here. I hope you do as well, thank you for being a member, and hoping that you will continue to be a member.
It is also true, however, that ARRL also advocates for EVERY ham radio operator in the USA (whether they’re members or not) by consistently fighting for the amateur radio community in front of congress and the FCC.
Simply put, the more members there are, the more effectively ARRL can perform its important functions upon which we all rely.
At $59/year, that’s less than $5 a month, a small price even if it just covered lobbying…but ARRL member benefits are far greater than that.
And for those under 26, it’s only $25/year, which is about the cost of a small cup of black coffee a month.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, or complaints, and I thank you for reading.
73,
Scott N7JI
ARRL Oregon SM
ars.n7ji@gmail.com
