Yesterday evening I met with Neil K8IT, who’s running for Great Lakes Division Director. It’s almost amazing how similarly our ideas are about how we would do things differently.
Perhaps Neil’s biggest hot button is the low percentage of amateurs that are ARRL members. This currently stands at about 23%. Despite this low percentage, Neil and I both agree that the ARRL has done little to increase the percentage.
Not only that, because the ARRL represents such a low percentage of hams, it diminishes our influence with the FCC and politicians. Doesn’t it seem that more and more the FCC is ignoring ARRL petitions? Case in point: the latest Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) from the FCC proposes to drop the 5 wpm code requirement entirely (the ARRL wanted to keep this requirement for obtaining the Amateur Extra class license) and completely ignores the ARRL’s request to create a beginner license class.
We both agree that while we’ve done a fairly good job of getting people into amateur radio, we’ve done a poor job of helping them improve their skills and become more active hams. The theory is that if we can activate the licensees that we do have, then a good percentage of them will join the ARRL. That will be good for the ARRL, but even more importantly, good for amateur radio.
Unfortunately, we’re both novices (no pun intended) when it comes to politics at this level. In discussing our campaign strategies, it became evident to me that we really should have been out campaigning months ago. Oh well, we still have a couple of months to go, and, with a little luck, who knows what could happen?
At any rate, neither of us is going to go away even if we don’t win. We’ll be working on the local and sectional levels, and making a difference in this way. Then, three years from now, we’ll take another whack at it.
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