News & Announcements

Rocky Mountain Division Net

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ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Scholarship established

It is with great pleasure that we announce the establishment of a new scholarship to be administered by the ARRL Foundation: the ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Scholarship. Here are the details:

• This scholarship is intended to provide funding for the educational expenses of a young Rocky Mountain Division amateur radio operator who is pursuing higher education.
• One scholarship of $500 will be awarded annually to a qualified applicant. If the recipient is not already an ARRL member, he or she will also be awarded a one-year League membership.
• The applicant must be a resident of our Rocky Mountain Division (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming), but he or she may use the award towards a degree at any fully-accredited university or college within the United States.
• The applicant must submit a letter of recommendation from a sitting officer of an ARRL-affiliated club attesting to the applicant's regular activity on the amateur radio spectrum and within the Amateur Radio community.
• The applicant must be a graduating high school senior or undergraduate student, and a US citizen.
• The scholarship is for the exclusive use of the recipient to be applied towards tuition, books, fees and other educational expenses.

SUPER-DUPER IMPORTANT NOTE: The application deadline for all ARRL Foundation scholarships, including the newly formed Rocky Mountain Division Scholarship, is FEBRUARY 1. If you are active within a ham club, personally know a qualifying young ham, or know somebody who knows a qualifying young ham, please help us spread the word fast and wide so interested hams can submit their application prior to the deadline.

Further details and web-based application are available at http://www.arrl.org/scholarship-descriptions

This scholarship, initially funded with proceeds from last August's 2011 ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Convention (Taos, New Mexico), is envisioned to become a gift that keeps on giving with the support of interested members within our Division. Individual hams, organizations, and future conventions interested in contributing towards its fund may do so any time via check payable to the ARRL Foundation with "ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Scholarship" written on the memo line, and mailed to:

ARRL Foundation
225 Main Street
Newington CT 06111

The ARRL Foundation, Inc. awards more than 70 scholarships to young hams who are pursuing higher education, and is a not-for-profit organization operated under IRS Tax ID # 23-7325472. All contributions will be acknowledged with a tax receipt letter and are deductible to the full extent of the law.

That February 1 application deadline is just around the corner; thanks for helping us spread the word so eligible youth within our Division can prepare and submit their applications.

Seeking the Thrill of Ham Radio

It's a new year, we'd like to add a new feature of our monthly Division-wide communication: to spotlight hams who are participating in or promoting the seemingly endless fun and magic of ham radio. Does this describe you or your group? If so, please touch base and we'll feature someone or some group in a future Division-wide email for all to enjoy.

Kicking off this feature, let's glance at a group in southern New Mexico and other parts of the country, spearheaded by David Hassall WA5DJJ, that's involved in QRSS. QRSS is extremely slow speed CW, to the tune of single dots lasting 3-6 seconds (or longer), sent and received with the aid of free software to communicate great distances using very low power. Why such slow speed? Think of a dark scene that you'd like to take a photograph of (without a flash). Setting the camera for a short exposure period would result in a dark or black photo. However, setting the camera for a long exposure period allows seemingly indiscernible light in the scene to be added, or integrated, and captured to produce a brilliant photo despite the dark scene. Similarly with QRSS, the lengthy CW dits and dahs in conjunction with tight filters allow the receiving station to pull the very low power signal out of the noise for a successful contact.

What does "low power" mean in the realm of QRSS? David has communicated to New Zealand on 30 meters with less than 250 milliwatts (mW). Pushing the envelope further, he recently communicated from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Pensacola, Florida with a mere 8.5 microwatts (uW). That's the amount of power a digital wristwatch runs by or, put another way, more than 11 MILLION times less RF power output than a typical 100 watt HF transceiver.

Over New Year's weekend a group of 15 hams, led by Dave, each put a very low power (QRPp) 30-meter transmitter on the air beginning at 0000UTC December 31, 2011 and kept them operational for 48 hours to see how many signals each could receive. A participating ham in New Zealand successfully copied the following stations: KE5OFK*, WB5UEW*, P29ZL*, KC7VHS*, W1BW, ZL1EE, K5DLA*, NM7J*, WE4DX, N5BL*, G0PKT, WB5FKC*, KD5SSJ*, KC5VR*, N5CWW*, K7TP, WA5DJJ* (* indicates associated to the Las Cruces group).

The typical QRSS transmitter is simply composed of three transistors, a crystal controlled oscillator, buffer, power amplifier and microprocessor programmed with the station's call sign. They were powered with a 5 or 12 volt source and measure approximately 2 x 2.5 inches. The typical antenna is a resonant dipole.

For more information about QRSS please contact Dave Hassall WA5DJJ (dhassall@zianet.com) or Cash Olsen KD5SSJ (qrss.kd5ssj@gmail.com). You may also find David's QRSS page quite interesting: http://www.zianet.com/dhassall/QRSS_A.html

A Look at ARRL's Advisory Committees (Part 3)

Continuing from the last few Rocky Mountain Division updates, we're diving a bit deeper into the topic of ARRL's advisory committees, describing the role and purview of each, as well as who represents our Division within them.

This month we take a look at ARRL's Emergency Communications Advisory Committee (ECAC), established by the Board of Directors at its 2010 Annual meeting. The ECAC was created in response to the report to the Board issued by the ARRL National Emergency Response Planning Committee (led by then-ARRL Vice President Kay Craigie, N3KN) that outlined how the League should respond to emergencies that overwhelm the resources of a Section or Division. The ECAC purpose is to make recommendations to the Programs and Services Committee (PSC) for Emergency Communications issues which are outside the scope of local and Section level. To date, the PSC has tasked the ECAC to comment on issues including the staging and deployment of the ARRL's Ham Aid 'Go Kits'; the qualifications, process and structure of a Major Disaster Emergency Coordinator (MDEC) position; and the study of the current operating relationship between ARES and the NTS.

The ECAC is comprised of a representative from each ARRL Division and a member representing the Radio Amateurs of Canada. ARRL Rocky Mountain Division's representative is Jeff Ryan K0RM of Westminster, Colorado. Jeff served as Colorado's Section Manager from 2001 to 2011 and previously served as Assistant Section Manager and Emergency Coordinator. He has nearly 20 years of experience in emergency communications operations and policy including contributions to the League's original emergency communications courses.

Next month we'll take a closer look at ARRL's Contest Advisory Committee (CAC).

2010 Rocky Mountain Division member survey results

We are pleased to provide the results of the 2010 Division survey. Please click here (Adobe PDF format)

Mobile Amateur Radio Operation Policy Statement

At its January 2009 meeting the ARRL board voted to create a policy statement with regard to mobile Amateur Radio operations to address the growing number of state and local laws and ordinances regulating the use of cellular telephone and text messaging, inadvertently affecting Amateur Radio mobile communications.

Earlier in 2009 there was pending state legislation of this sort in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Through contact with hams and various legislators, Section Managers and State Government Liaisons of these states coordinated grassroots efforts to eliminate the bills' potential impact on mobile amateur radio communications, or to oppose the bills entirely. This issue isn't new, and it's not going to disappear either, which is why ARRL has created this policy statement which includes suggested statutory language for state motor vehicle codes.

A brief story about this action and the actual policy statement can be found at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2009/02/03/10609/?nc=1

Please keep in close contact with your respective Section Managers and his appointed State Government Liaison when it comes to addressing these sorts of bills. A closely coordinated effort is crucial to success when engaging lawmakers, informing them of drawbacks to their legislation, and lobbying them to make changes to it.