Tuesday, July 27, 2010

LWRA TRADERS NET (3) 7-27-10

Well, another net has come and gone with 19 checkins and good conversations. We want to welcome everyone to come to our meetings and meet the crew and get to know what we are up to and join our club if you so desire. Make sure and make plans to join us next week on August 3rd, 2010 for the next LWRA TRADERS NET.

YA'LL COME BACK NOW--YA'HERE.........
KJ4INW (Rich)

Monday, July 26, 2010

ARRL Argues that Oklahoma Town’s RFI Ordinance is “Null and Void”

Saying that only the Federal Communications Commission is empowered to regulate radio frequency interference (RFI), the ARRL has notified Midwest City, Oklahoma, that its local ordinance 27-3(9), seeking to regulate radio transmissions and RFI, is “null and void.” Midwest City is in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.
Midwest City’s Ordinance 27-3(9) reads: “In addition to other public nuisances declared by other sections of this Code or law, the following [is] hereby declared to be [a] public nuisance: Operating or using any electrical apparatus or machine which materially and unduly interferes with radio or television reception by others.” Section 27 of Midwest City’s Ordinances deals with nuisances.

On July 21, ARRL General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, wrote to Midwest City Assistant City Manager Dave Ballew, City Attorney Katherine Bolles and Director of Code Enforcement Mike Stroh, informing them that the ARRL had been provided with a copy of the ordinance by amateurs in that community. “We are also aware that a notice was sent by Mr Stroh on behalf of the City to one of ARRL’s members who resides in Midwest City asserting that the FCC-licensed radio amateur to whom the letter was addressed was in violation of the ordinance as the result of radio frequency interference appearing in a neighbor/complainant’s home electronic equipment,” the letter read. “The licensed radio amateur was ordered to remedy the problem in one day, under penalty of a sanction assessed against the real property of the radio amateur.”

Section 27-2 of the nuisance ordinance states the penalty for non-compliance: “It shall be unlawful for any person to create or maintain a public nuisance within the or [sic] to permit a public nuisance to remain on premises under his control within the city” and that “the punishment for a violation of this chapter shall be a minimum of one hundred dollars ($100.00) or fifteen (15) days imprisonment or both such fine and imprisonment and shall not exceed two hundred dollars ($200.00) or thirty (30) days imprisonment or both such fine and imprisonment. Each day a violation shall continue shall constitute a separate offense.”

The letter explained to the Midwest City officials that as the FCC is the only entity empowered to regulate RFI, that this matter “is not a proper subject for municipal regulation by Midwest City, and your ordinance 27-3(9), which purports to regulate RFI is preempted on its face, and is therefore null and void. The City in fact has absolutely no jurisdiction whatsoever over radio frequency interference. Such regulation is exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission and all regulation of radio transmission and interference phenomena is preempted by Federal law.”

All radio stations operate, and all telecommunications are regulated pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934, As Amended. The FCC has exclusive jurisdiction over RFI matters and all technical matters associated with radio communications. In the letter, General Counsel Imlay presented almost 20 legal cases defining the Commission’s role and its sole authority over these matters.

In the Communications Amendments Act of 1982, the legislation clearly demonstrated that Congress intended to completely preempt the regulation of RFI: “The Conference Substitute is further intended to clarify the reservation over matters involving RFI. Such matters will not be regulated by local or state law, nor shall radio transmitting apparatus be subject to local or state regulation as part of any effort to resolve an RFI complaint. The Conferees believe that radio transmitter operators should not be subject to fines, forfeitures, or other liability imposed by any local or state authority as a result of interference appearing in home electronic equipment or systems. Rather, the Conferees intend that regulation of RFI phenomena shall be imposed only by the [Federal Communications] Commission.” The Conference also clarified that “the exclusive jurisdiction over RFI incidents (including preemption of state and local regulation of such phenomena) lies with the FCC.”

General Counsel Imlay expressed his hope that it will not be necessary to submit Midwest City’s Ordinance 27-3(9) to the FCC by way of a Request for a Declaratory Ruling, “but that would be [the ARRL’s] planned course of action unless Ordinance 27-3(9) is rescinded and that letter from Mr Stroh to the radio amateur in Midwest City is retracted immediately. That radio amateur has the full support of ARRL in any action he may choose to take in this connection."

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

LWRA TRADERS NET (2) 7-20-10

I would like to thank everyone who checked into the LWRA Traders Net. We improved our net already with the checkins growing to 19 plus myself as Net Control. This is a very good number considering it's only our second net.
I would also like to say that we had ALL of our Officers check into the net and that's very special to me as I have never heard a net with all of their officers checking in a single night.
.......KOODO'S to the LWRA........
Don't forget to keep an eye on the SWAP page for all of our listings.

Thanks Again to everyone, Rich (KJ4INW)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

LWRA Traders Net

I would like to thank everyone who participated in our First LWRA Traders Net. We had a total of 15 checkins and everything seemed to go very well and we even had our first check in thru the echo-link, thanks to N2ROD (Pat). I was very pleased at the turn out for our first efforts and hope to see it grow into something we all can be proud of. Thanks, Rich (KJ4INW)

Please check the Swap Page for things listed for sale from our first Traders Net..

First Half of 2010 Sees Upswing in New Amateur Radio Licenses

07/13/2010

With more than 18,000 new Amateur Radio licenses issued in the first half of this year -- 18, 270 to be exact -- 2010 is shaping up to be a banner year for Amateur Radio. So far, the number of new licenses issued by the FCC in 2010 is outpacing the January-June 2009 totals by almost 8.5 percent; at this time last year, the FCC had issued 16,844 new licenses.

In 2009, a total of 30,144 new licenses were granted, an increase of almost 7.5 percent from 2008. In 2005, 16,368 new hams joined Amateur Radio’s ranks -- just five years later, that number had increased by almost 14,000, a whopping 84 percent! The ARRL VEC is one of 14 VECs who administer Amateur Radio license exams.

Comparing 2010 to 2009, the only month that had higher license totals in 2009 was January: 1960 licenses were issued in January 2009, compared with 1726 in January 2010. Beginning in February, 2010 showed higher new license numbers: 2263 in February 2010 versus 2749 in February 2010; 3463 in March 2009 compared with 3734 in March 2010; 3430 in April 2009 compared with 3508 in April 2010; 2717 in May 2009 compared with 3136 in May 2010, and 3011 in June 2009 versus 3417 in June 2010.

As of June 30, 2010, there are 694,346 licensed Amateur Radio operators in the US, an almost 1 percent rise over all of 2009. In 2009, there were 682,500 licensed Amateur Radio operators in the US, an almost 3 percent rise over 2008. In 2008, there were 663,500 licensed amateurs; there were 655,800 in 2007. Broken down by license class at the end of June 2010, there were 16,299 Novices, 342,064 Technicians, 154,284 Generals, 60,059 Advanced and 121,640 Amateur Extra licensees.

“The ARRL VEC has been busy meeting the needs of the Amateur Radio community by helping people to become radio amateurs or upgrade their existing licenses,” said ARRL VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM. “So far in 2010, ARRL VEs have administered 20,929 exam elements at 3600 ARRL VEC-sponsored exam sessions. The number of amateurs who want to be Volunteer Examiners and who want to teach Amateur Radio classes is also going up -- we’ve seen a spike in the number of applications from General and Extra class radio amateurs who want to give back to their community by serving as ARRL examiners and instructors.”

Thursday, July 8, 2010

K4LKW Post cards

Ok folks, we discussed post cards at the July meeting.
KJ4RLG did some rough stuff on line and came up with the below.

Click on them for a larger view.

Front:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Back:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Please leave comments for these at the comment link.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

7887 kHz, Your Home for Classic Cuban Espionage Radio

The FBI documents that accompanied last week's arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies are alternately creepy—who knew the Tribeca Barnes & Noble was a hotbed of espionage?—and comical—turns out even foreign spies wanted to cash in on suburban New Jersey's real estate boom. With a nod to Boris and Natasha, the accused are also said to have used short-wave radio, a 1920s-era technology that, because of its particular place in the spectrum, can bounce off the atmosphere and travel across continents. The FBI's criminal complaint paints a picture of stateside spies hunkered down in front of their radios, year after year, in homes in Montclair, N.J.; Yonkers, N.Y.; Boston; and Seattle, furiously filling spiral notebooks with "apparently random columns of numbers" broadcast from the motherland.

Click here for the rest of the story

Saturday, July 3, 2010

First Monthly VE session was a success.

Our very first VE session for the LWRA was a success!
We had 2 folks that completed their upgrades. Please join me in congratulating Jason KJ4INV on his upgrade to Amateur extra and Kip KJ4INX on his upgrade to General.

Here is the group,left to right
Don WN3USA, Judson KJ4IDH, Kip KJ4INX, Roger KI4YQT,Jason KJ4INV, Rich KJ4INW, John WB4KZM, Al K2RXD, Bear KJ4DSM.















Here they are in deep concentration















With a big thanks to the Polk County chapter of the American Rec Cross for use of thier facilties.