Bible
Verse
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 ASV
Next MARC Business Meeting
The next business meeting will be held at the Checker Board Restaurant on Saturday, October 7th, 2017 beginning at 10 A.M. Come join us for breakfast, coffee and fellowship.
President's Report
Hello all,
Here we are, almost another year come and gone. We have made it through the worst part of the hurricane season, but that doesn't mean that we won't have another one come into the gulf before the season ends. Lets hope that doesn't happen!
Congrats to the new trustee of the WX5MEI station at LEMA, Ben Duett. He took over from the previous trustee Richard Morefield due to some family issues and we hope all goes well with that. We made a minor shake down of the equipment at the site and found the packet station to be inoperable, due to a radio malfunction. We will try to repair or replace the unit soon and should have the station back on the air. We are planning to use the packet station for relaying information from the local community and with Clarke county. When finished it will receive and print out the local information to have for activity reports.
I look foward to seeing you at the meeting this Saturday.
73's Charles Grisham KB5SZJ
Amateur Radios Fill Critical Communication Gaps
Published by Roger Wicker in The Wicker Report dated 09/11/2017
Alongside storm cleanup, Mississippi’s amateur radio operators are addressing communication needs. With no electricity and destroyed communications infrastructure, hurricane victims have limited options to connect with first responders. Amateur, or “ham,” radio operators played a vital role after Katrina, and many Mississippians are volunteering as part of a national hurricane response effort led by the American Radio Relay League.
In addition to transmitting emergency calls and facilitating life-saving resources, amateur radios enable the recovery effort get underway as quickly as possible despite continued outages among main communications lines. They are also useful in monitoring a storm’s lingering effects and conditions, such as wind speed. Given the reliability and resiliency of amateur radios, I have been supportive of their continued service, authoring a bill this year designed to ease some of the regulatory hurdles that amateur radio operators have faced.
HAM? HAM radio? ham radio? Amateur Radio? amateur radio!
By Dan Romanchik, KB6NU
On the ARRL PR mailing list, we've been discussing the proper way to refer to amateur radio. What brought this up was an email from one list subscriber, Richard, WB6NAH, who was (rightfully) proud of the work that his club—the Skagit Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Club—was doing. He noted that they were even featured in the police department's emergency preparedness brochure:
As you can see, the brochure refers to "HAM radio" and "HAM radio operators."
Referring to amateur radio in this way just drives me crazy. "Ham radio" is just a nickname for amateur radio, and "HAM" is certainly not an acronym for anything. I congratulated Richard on getting his club included in the brochure, but noted, "...it’s not HAM radio! It’s either 'amateur radio' or 'ham radio' (ham is not an acronym). I hate to be nitpicky about this, but as a professional writer, this usage just drives me crazy." He replied, "I agree on Amateur Radio, that was the city's call."
That kicked off the discussion.
One ham replied to me privately, "Thank you...I am continually trying to explain that it is not an acronym or abbreviation."
Another replied to the list:
The most correct term is "amateur radio" or alternatively "ham radio", both written in normal case. If using "ham radio", it is a best practice to first write "amateur (ham) radio" in the first non-header/non-title occurrence.
Some will write "Amateur Radio" in proper noun format (first letters in caps) and while this may be acceptable to many and in certain venues, anyone using a style handbook will say it is incorrect. Less correct is to write "Ham Radio" in proper noun format as this is a slang term, albeit a popular one. Of course either term may be written as proper nouns when part of a title or name of an organization.
Least correct is to write "HAM" in all caps; as stated by others, ham is not an abbreviation or acronym. Writing it as "HAM" is completely wrong, will drive many people bonkers, and should be avoided at all costs.
Ward, N0AX, offered this explanation:
To clarify where the capitalization originated, there is a long-standing ARRL Board Directive, decades old, stipulating that the words "Amateur Radio" be capitalized in ARRL publications and documents. Most non-amateur publications return it to the lower-case style that is used for non-proper nouns.
One guy got a little miffed that we were wasting our time discussing this at all:
You know, I've been reading this thread and I think people are getting too hung up on very minor details. The bottom line they got PR. So something wasn't spelled right or capitalized, so what. The message got out and IMHO that's the bottom line. Let's not waste any more bandwidth on this.
I agreed that it was great that they were included in the brochure, and that we were probably beating this topic to death, but I don’t think these are minor details. I said that PR professionals pride themselves on getting the details right. So should amateur radio PR people.
I'll give the final word to Dan, AI4GK. He wrote:
I don't think that standardizing what we call ourselves qualifies as getting hung up on minor details. If we don't have a standardized way of referring to us, how can we expect a public, who already is confused, to understand who we are?
I don't think that you can argue with this. Let's avoid confusion by using "amateur radio" when writing about our hobby/service. I'd even urge the ARRL to rethink their use of "Amateur Radio." Sometimes, it may be OK to use "ham radio," but it's just not correct to use "HAM radio" or just "HAM."
---
Dan, KB6NU, is the author of the “No Nonsense” amateur radio license study guides and blogs about amateur radio at KB6NU.Com. When he's not picking nits about the name of our hobby, he teaches ham radio classes and operates CW on the HF bands. You can email him at cwgeek@kb6nu.com.
Report from MFJ 45th Year Anniversary
MFJ Day had over 500 people register for the event. I was at MFJ by 8:50 yesterday and they had a few tailgaters with various items. I did not see anything I really wanted / needed.
Group from our area:
Gary KF5MWE
Charlie WA5WUX
Brad WN5MHZ
Stan NO5A
Ray WB5F
Frank KF5ETN
John W5MIX & Vanessa
Lowndes County VE’s were there early and had about 15 that tested and several new Hams. Not all passed.
None of our people won any door prizes and by 2 P. M. it was getting Hot in the Park. I had a safe trip home and look forward to the 50th Celebration in five years.
73’s KF5ETN Keep On Praying
Quote of the Day
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
- -- Chinese proverb
Have a great month
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October 2017