HR2.0 - YouTubers Bunch Discusses ARRL Membership Benefits and Fallbacks

In this installment of the YouTubers Bunch, a collection of Ham Radio Operators with YouTube Channels, we discuss the ARRL.

Is ARRL membership important? Who IS a member? What benefit does the ARRL have for Amateur Radio in the USA? Lots of different views and topics are discussed in this episode, I hope you enjoy it.

 

hallo ham RADIO member,s shipp everyon,s greeting .sincerely vy73 DJOAJ ekrem

 

Well it is $49 bucks to renew membership for the ARRL.
This well be the first time for me but I wont be renewing my membership with ARRL.
IF the ARRL would concentrate it' efforts more on spectrum defense not on more members I would stay with them. I well miss the qsl bureau !

 

I am a member. I do like QST. It did take me more than 25 year to join though. They do have good services. Then again I am old school. My only gear is home made tube gear and a Collins S. Line station. The 32S1 with 75S1 and it is as old as I am. Not a fan of sand radio's but that is me.

 

Overall I do not mind spending $49 a year for membership, I pay more for other membership to other organizations. I am a QRZ member at Platinum level.

I like the QST mag, Log Book of the World, The Podcast, the books and Contest Calendar. The QST mag has gotten better over this last year. I am looking forward to the new Magazines. I do like the ads in QST so I can keep up on what is new and what current prices are.

I do think they should hold off on increasing the annual membership fees.

 

I am not a paying member of the ARRL and I think I was only one for a year or 2 when I first started out. Then I got smart. They did not support AM operators or vintage operations and I had a few semi heated head to heads with the local arrl boss. This was years ago. As far as what they offer? There isn't one thing I find they offer me. The politics of the arrl is what they want to push but pretend to be for all the average hams. The magazine never will give negative review on a product, and the arrl lab testing is... well I wont even get into it. Also now days a guy can use eqsl or others to get cards and chase paper. Nothing is fresh from these folks for the last 60 years. Do some reading of how things were in the early days. Anyhow I wont loose sleep not being a "member".

 

Time to get on the bands and not ---just--talk about'em on Youtube.

We used to yak about this stuff on SSB. Now we play TV producers...

Any reason why we can't do both?

73
Chip W1YW

 

Absolutely we can do both. The more the merrier. However, we (us YouTubers) are on the bands. We are up front in the hobby. We are at the ham swaps and conventions. We're the ones producing informative content to keep the hobby alive. We eat, sleep, and breath Ham Radio, and thats why we do what we do. Lest anyone think it's easy, it costs money to make free videos for people to watch, and it takes countless hours of filming and editing to make a viable product. But we do it because we love it, and we want to pay it forward. We are the new age of Elmers. We do reviews of products. We show how things work. We teach. We learn from our own mistakes and share that with others. If you ask me, that's what ham radio is all about. It's just on a newer format. I don't see a whole lot of "elmering" in the hobby as it was understood to me from my studies. No one has sat me down and shown me "this is how you do it". I either learned on my own thru trial and error, or watched someone else on youtube who has figured it out and had the mindset to upload it so others could learn. I don't know if you can say that for the current state of the ARRL, regardless of what they may say...

 

I was an annually renewing member since becoming licensed as a novice in 1974. Shortly after upgrading I opted for the lifetime membership and am glad I did. I continued reading QST even after I let my license lapse in 1996. This continued subscription eventually led to my relicensing in 2016.

Quite frankly I don't think there has been any "dumbing down" of QST. I don't recall the small format magazine being a great pantheon of technology as some have indicated here on the zed. I have had subscriptions to technical magazines throughout my engineering career. I always found QST more fun to read.

I have always felt that the ARRL is necessary to promoting amateur radio. To those who feel otherwise I would ask who else represents us?

 

Good answer. Congrats on the Extra

Carry on.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Mike,

Here's a little trick on your SM58.

The 57 and 58 have a profound proximity effect that modulates very well on your rig with the compression set on relatively high. The problem is the 'puh' and sibilance get bad when you nearly swallow the mike, which is what you need to best get the effect. I recommend the usual 'panty hose' or very thin foam mike screen, not the commercial dealies--they offset you too much for the effect.

BTW, (in my audio studio) I spent years trying out and rotating various mikes to best get a thick vocal (on me). The expensive Urei and ribbon mikes didn't work: the SM57 with an 1176 and UA-2 compressor did. Guess I am a cheap date (vocally)as they say..

There's a piece of Elmering fer yeh

73
Chip W1YW

 

The ARRL started as 'p&55 and vinegar' (a la John Steinbeck) organization under Hiram Percy Maxim. (You should read his 100 year old editorials; amazing stuff!) One could easily argue that for over 80 years, it became overly conservative and , in some ways (not all), ossified and locked.

Here's a typical HPM editorial--
http://www.arrl.org/news/the-old-man-rotten-reasons

The poor assumption some of you guys are presently making is that it is STILL in that mode.

It is not: recent shakeups on the board have pushed initiatives to get more new Techs on the air. Even VIDEO elmering.

Recruiting 'new members' is, of course, an objective. But getting Techs on the air exceeds that by far.

Let me say that again-- the objective(per se) is not 'how to we get new members'. Its HOW TO WE GET TECHS ON THE AIR. How do we detail the value of a ham ticket and what benefits can we offer these hams as an organziation. That's how it looks to me, anyway.

Yes, indeed!

Its unfortunate some of your guys don't see this. Basically flogging a horse when its going from lope to canter is counterproductive.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Not 'just a hobby'...

Well, let me sober up the hyperbole a bit. Your point is a good one, but I know you concede that ham radio has man, many facets. Frankly, I don't think you guys fully appreciate both the foundation of technical skill and innovation (IN THE WIRELESS (radio) ART) that ham radio was built upon and continues to this day. Y'all didn't come from that direction, so to many(of you) it seems snotty, old school, even irrelevant.

Let me remind us once again of the MISSION STATEMENT (97.1) on the amateur radio service in Part 97...

The rules and regulations in this part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles:

(a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications.

(b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.

(c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art.

(d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.

(e) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international goodwill.

There's a lot of room for picking niches. Kindly understand that I, and many others, aren't too happy when we get accused of being 'high brow'; 'arrogant'; 'nerdy'; you name it.

We are who we are because this is how we came in to ham radio, and the Part 97 mission statement details what appealed to us. Other aspects appealed to you. That's cool. We are ALL amateur radio operators.

Just a perspective...

73
Chip W1YW

 

Here's a VIDEO perspective, of how ham radio SAW itself 40+ years ago.

You will see, here, the emphasis is not 'hobby' but cool technology, innovation, training of electronic expertise, international camaraderie, and EC...basically the check list of the Part 97 mission statement....

An ARRL movie, BTW...

ARRL was/is always devoted to recruiting folks into ham radio. Its not about getting ARRL new members and money, per se.

 

Thank you for the intelligent response. I am a member of the ARRL and I support the league. I get tired of hearing all the ARRL bashing on QRZ. It comes from people who have themselves NEVER done anything for ham radio.

The ARRL has done great deal of good for ham radio. The ARRL bashers have done squat for the hobby.
John