Bible
Verse
Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter
1:5-8, NIV
President's Report
Happy New Year and welcome to all the new officers. I hope many of you can make this months meeting. We will start things off with Fred Gray and Gary White bringing a bit of information on becoming a member of the MARS network. This presentation will be done before the meeting starts, so show up early and get you a good seat for this event. Afterwards we will hold the monthly meeting and introduce our new officers.
73's Charles Grisham KB5SZJ
Next MARC Business Meeting
The next business meeting will be held at the Checker Board Restaurant on Saturday, January 3rd, 2015 beginning at 10 A.M. Come join us for breakfast, coffee and fellowship.
Special presentation by Fred Gray and Gary White regarding MARS.
Treasurer Report
It's that time again; Please bring your dues to the Checker Board Restaurant on Saturday mornings or mail them to the address below. Thank you for your support. Dues are:
- $23.00 per Year per Member
- $25.00 per Year for Family
- $15.00 per year if 65 or older
MARC
c/o Shelly McCormick
4973 Mehan Savoy Rd South
Enterprise, MS 39330
73, Shelly, KI6DES
Lauderdale Repeater Group w5LRG
146.970 - ki5fw/R (pl 100hz)
444.500 + w5LRG/R
GE to all: As some of you already know that it is the time of year for both the Lauderdale Repeater Group and Meridian Amateur Radio Club to jointly pay for Liability Insurance to cover both groups and repeater sites. This year’s premium remains the same price or $325.00 for a one year policy. Both groups will pay half of the premium ($162.50 each). I urge everyone to help pay for this expense. If you use any one of / or both repeaters just remember these things do not stay on the air all by themselves. All donations will be greatly appreciated. Dennis NO5C
Contributions can be mailed to:
Lauderdale Repeater Group w5LRG
c/o: Dennis Carpenter
7760 Vanzyverden Road
Meridian, MS 39305
Capital City Hamfest and Mississippi state ARRL Convention
FRI JAN 23rd 2015 5:00PM - 8:00PM
SAT JAN 24th 2015 8:00AM - 4:00PM
Hamfest admission is $8.00, includes 1 FREE door prize ticket. For $15 you get admission and 10 door prize tickets. Admission is FREE for children 12 and under!
This year’s Guest Speaker is Rick Roderick, K5UR, the ARRL First Vice-President
More information here: hamfest.msham.org
How do we promote better operating practices?
A lament that I often hear is that many amateur radio operators either don't seem to understand the importance of good operating practices or just don't care about them. Just this morning, a reader sent me an e-mail saying, "I think there are too many hams out there that don't how to call a station on split frequency. It's amazing that we have so many dummies out there."
I wrote back, saying, "Maybe we need another type of Official Observer, called the Operating Observer. This group would note when operators aren't following good operating procedures and send people gentle reminders." Of course, as soon as I hit Send, I knew this wasn't a very good idea. As my reader noted, this would be a thankless job, and chances are the poor operators would simply ignore the notices, anyway.
Even so, there must be some way to encourage good operating procedures. One effort to promote better operating procedures is the DX Code of Conduct (http://www.dx-code.org/). This is a list of 13 suggestions to make DX operation, particularly pileups, less chaotic. The web site includes a small image that you're supposed to post to your web site to show that you support the Code. While this is certainly a step in the right direction, I wish there was something that we could do to be more proactive in improving operating practices.
There is, of course, the ARRL Operating Manual. This publication is now is in its tenth edition and is a valuable source of information about how to operate properly. The problem is only a fraction of the amateur radio operators on the air have a copy, much less read it.
Another attempt at promoting good operating practice is the ARRL's A-1 Operator's Club (http://www.arrl.org/a-1-op). While a noble effort, I think that this program really requires more promotion. In addition to being more aggressive about finding A-1 operators and bringing them into this "club," the ARRL should use it to promote better operation. Perhaps a series of videos with the A-1 Ops logo showing how to operate split or how to properly call CQ would help improve operating practices overall.
Talking about videos, I'd be surprised if there weren't already some YouTube videos that illustrate good operating practices. If you know of any, please e-mail me. It would be great to have a list of really good ones that I can send to people who want information on how to operate better.
What do you think? Do we need to be more proactive about encouraging hams to use good operating practices? If so, how do we go about it? What do you do to encourage better operating practices?
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When not worrying about the state of amateur radio operating practices, you'll find KB6NU working on updates to his "No Nonsense" study guides, teaching one-day Tech classes, or blogging about amateur radio at www.kb6nu.com.
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January 2015