Progressive Changes at the ARRL

If COVID has hit the profits of either the RSGB or ARRL, then they are doing something very wrong. They are primarily book and magazine publishers. They need have little face-to-face contact with the public and virtually all their operations can be conducted from employees homes. OK, they do represent the ham community in dealings with the licencing authorities and others, but that is not a profit centre activity - if meetings have been conducted remotely over Zoom or similar, then they have probably saved money in travelling and accommodation. Membership will not have been reduced - if anything, it will have increased as bored people unable to travel have looked for new hobbies.

It's service companies that rely on significant face-to-face contact - like restaurants and hairdressers - that have suffered. The RSGB or ARRL are not in any category that needs government support to get through this.

Martin

 

Can you say: "FIXED COSTS" ????

Small enterprises, whether profit or non profit, have had severe consequences from COVID. As one who has had to navigate same, and heard dozens of horror stories from other enterprises, I think you should be a little more realistic about simplistic cubbie holes on 'weathering the storm'.

If the ARRL justified their PPP then just be quiet and let them pick up the pieces from a lost (plus) year. There is nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about it.

We are happy they are forward looking. Damn pleasant to see in anyone and anywhere these days.

Try it.

 

I wonder how many sick and elderly hams have succumbed to the Chinese Fflu around the world?

 

But why has there been an impact on their income? Subscriptions are paid a year in advance. Has membership dropped significantly? Have book sales dropped? Have their operating costs gone up significantly? I seriously fail to see why their bottom line should be hit noticeably by COVID. I would be seriously displeased if the RSGB had taken any government money in this last 12 months when there are thousands of other businesses that have been hit very hard by this...

Martin

 

Why don't you review the public reporting of their financial statement for 2020 and then report back to us.

Otherwise it is a speculation with an unsavory implication of wrong doing.

 

Did you not get the memo? we are to do away with common since. Think Progressive, think like you have no brain.

 

All the movies about Zombie Apocalypse creatures eating everyone and destroying the world really means the results of a Progressive Apocalypse.

 

“I’ll take anybody’s money if they’re giving it away.” – Namond Brice, The Wire S4E02 (repeated more memorably and crudely by Sen. Clay Davis later in the episode).

 

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73 ES EVERYONE HAVE A FUN FILLED WEEKEND

 

Incentive licensing as you're thinking of it was an FCC initiative.

 

See Post #14, page 2. Good stock market year. Less spent on travel. Significantly lower expenses. Lots of cash on hand. Per BoD meeting, January 2021:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/ODV/...Annual Board of Directors Meeting Minutes.pdf

12. CFO Report – Ms. Middleton
Ms. Middleton presented the report of the Chief Financial Officer. She reported that despite the challenges of 2020 the League generated a small gain from operations and continues to maintain a strong balance sheet along with healthy cash balances. She also reported that ARRL experienced significantly lower spending in 2020 due to travel restrictions and the temporary postponement of filling some vacant positions. She then entertained questions. Responding to a question regarding the Paycheck Protection Program, Ms. Middleton noted that it is expected that the loan will be fully forgiven under the program and ARRL does not qualify for a second loan under the program.

 

1967
“Incentive Licensing” takes effect, returning the Advanced class license and taking privileges away from Generals, effectively stopping growth of Amateur Radio and causing a lot of bad feelings among the amateur community for the ARRL who originally proposed the program.

https://ema.arrl.org/a-history-of-amateur-radio-license-changes/

In the February 1963 issue of "QST," an editorial appeared in which the ARRL expressed regret over the abandonment of the incentive license structure, called the 1952 decision a step backward, and proposed a new incentive licensing system be implemented.

On May 3, 1963, the ARRL Board of Directors adopted their official position on incentive licensing.

Their proposal would completely take away all General and Conditional class phone privileges on 75, 40, 20, and 15 meters in a two-year phase-in period. In other words, the ARRL's incentive licensing would only allow HF phone operation for Generals and Conditionals on 10 meters and on the small sliver of 160 meters that was available in the days of LORAN Radionavigation.

The ARRL also suggested reopening the Advanced class license again to those who held a General or Conditional license for one year. Strangely, the ARRL did not suggest that Extras be given exclusive frequencies, nor did they propose exclusive CW frequencies. Rather, they just wanted exclusive access to the 75 through 15-meter phone segments for the Advanced and Extra class licenses.

https://www.qsl.net/ng3p/haminfo/wayback/waybak14.html

 

That test from EMass didn't come from staff despite the domain that hosts it, and is as simplistic as written-only-on-the-basis-of-magazine-articles ham history tends to be. FCC initiated the idea that became known as Incentive Licensing, partially as a result of the Sputnik scare; US radio amateurs were not "keeping up" with technology. ARRL worked to make the fait accompli less onerous. IL was going to happen whether ARRL went along with it or not. Unfortunately League Officialdom's approach to highlighting the League's counterproposals through QST, when read on their face without an understanding of the background, make the program look like it originated with the League. It did not.

Yes, many hams voted with their feet, as taking privileges away from existing licensees could have been anticipated would happen. But incentive licensing was essentially pretty rapidly abandoned -- first when the planned-for-1969 second wave of changes (one of which was to make the 25 kHz subbands at the bottom of most HF bands 50 kHz), and later with the phone band expansion of 1972, as a related result of which rulemaking Novices also got VFO frequency control -- in no small part due to the street's reaction. (Which reaction I happen to think was appropriate, considering that to the street, ham radio is a hobby.)

On the other hand, as a result of the general IL-driven quantum foam, George Grammer wrote Understanding Amateur Radio, "the Handbook for the rest of us."

Funny, it seems to me to be that generally the same class of folks who complain about incentive licensing also nowadays complain that ham radio has gotten too stupid. As originally pushed by FCC, IL intended to make as many hams Extra as possible or bust -- the "bust" being licensees' figurative gonads. I'd've thought that such a hardcore "smarten up or leave" program would appeal to such minds. But if one's hobby has pretty much devolved to hating whatever officialdom does, any hook will do.

I've had my Extra since 1978, and took and passed a more modern version of the test -- in fact, that test and all examination elements that are prerequisites to it -- in 2007. (I would've been happy to come away with the Tech, as my only interest was 80- and 40-m CW, but they kept handing me tests, so hey.) I'm also a League Life Member. So personally, as R. B. Bourne put it long ago in one of my fave QST essays ( http://dpnwritings.nfshost.com/ej/bourne_193207.htm ), I can't be bothered.

 

Remember: they were FOR incentive licensing before they were AGAINST it.

 

Jeez,
ANOTHER INCENTIVE LICENSING digression...

Just to set it straight--

The original IL plan from the FCC was to ADD spectrum for the higher class licensees, especially expanding the phone spectrum. Instead the first execution took AWAY phone privileges for everyone except extras.