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The ARRL Letter

Published by the American Radio Relay League
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January 25, 2024

John E. Ross, KD8IDJ, Editor <news@arrl.org>

ARRL Home Page <http://www.arrl.org/>ARRL Letter Archive
<http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/>Audio News
<http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/audio/> IN THIS ISSUE

- ARRL Board Approves Free Membership for Students, New Vice Presidents
Elected
- YLISSB Celebrates 61 Years On the Air
- Dr. Philip Erickson, W1PJE, New Director of MIT Haystack Observatory
- Amateur Radio in the News
- ARRL Podcasts
- Announcements
- In Brief...
- The K7RA Solar Update
- Just Ahead in Radiosport
- Upcoming Section, State, and Division Conventions

==> ARRL BOARD APPROVES FREE MEMBERSHIP FOR STUDENTS, NEW VICE
PRESIDENTS ELECTED

The ARRL Board of Directors met in Windsor, Connecticut, on January 19
- 20, 2024, for its Annual Meeting.

ARRL President Rick Roderick, K5UR, presided over the meeting, and
the Board welcomed Vice Director of the ARRL Great Lakes Division Roy
Hook, W8REH, as a newly elected member to the Board.

The Board authorized a new, free ARRL membership for students. For
decades, ARRL has offered a reduced dues rate for young hams, currently
priced at $30 per year. At this meeting, the Board established a new
option for a no-cost Associate membership for full-time students aged
21 and younger.

The Board re-elected ARRL President Rick Roderick, K5UR, to a fifth
2-year term.

The Board also elected Director of the ARRL Pacific Division Kristen
McIntyre, K6WX, to be First Vice President, succeeding Michael
Raisbeck, K1TWF.

Director of the ARRL Northwestern Division Mike Ritz, W7VO, was
elected Second Vice President, succeeding Bob Vallio, W6RGG. ARRL Vice
President of International Affairs Rod Stafford, W6ROD, was re-elected.

The elections of McIntyre and Ritz to the Vice President positions
mean that incumbent Vice Directors Anthony Marcin, W7XM (Pacific
Division), and Mark Tharp, KB7HDX (Northwestern Division), will succeed
as Division Directors, creating vacancies for Vice Director in those
Divisions, which will be filled by appointment.

The complete minutes of the 2024 Annual Meeting of the ARRL Board of
Directors will be available soon on the ARRL website. Read more about
the Board's actions in the ARRL Member Bulletin
<http://www.arrl.org/member-bulletin?issue=2024-01-21>.

The next meeting of the ARRL Board of Directors is scheduled for July
19 - 20, 2024.

ARRL is governed by an all-volunteer Board of Directors. Elections are
held for five of the 15 ARRL Divisions each year, for terms of 3 years.

==> YLISSB CELEBRATES 61 YEARS ON THE AIR

February 8, 2024, marks the 61st anniversary of the YL System, now
known as the YL International Single Side-band System (YLISSB)
<https://ylsystem.org/>, founded by Vera Mayree Tallman, K4ICA (SK), in
1963.

Tallman received her first license in 1956 and later earned her
General-class license. Though the system's name includes "YL," the
amateur radio term for "young lady," membership is open to both women
and men. YLISSB is a community of radio amateurs who provide support,
service, and fellowship to one another and to the rest of the amateur
radio community. YLISSB also encourages amateur radio skill development
through both personal and system-wide support programs.

The YLISSB operates on 14.332 MHz every day of the year. On February 8
- 11, from 1323Z to 1323Z, special event station K4ICA will operate on
14.240 - 14.340 MHz and 7.230 - 7.260 MHz to commemorate the system's
61st anniversary.

To receive a QSL card, send a letter via self-addressed stamped
envelope to John Ellis, W5PDW, at 26231 Huffsmith Conroe Rd., Magnolia,
TX 77354.

==> DR. PHILIP ERICKSON, W1PJE, NEW DIRECTOR OF MIT HAYSTACK
OBSERVATORY

ARRL Member and active radio amateur Dr. Philip Erickson, W1PJE, is the
new director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Haystack Observatory.

The prestigious scientific appointment is the continuation of a
radio interest that began in his youth. "I started as a shortwave
listener in the mid-1970's as a middle school student. So, in some
sense, I was always fooling with antennas in the back yard and trying
to understand why signals got to me at different times -- why were they
different in the day and at night? What was the farthest place I could
hear, or the closest place?"

That early interest led him to an electrical engineering degree and
ultimately, a doctorate in space plasma physics from Cornell University
that he earned in 1998. Erickson was first licensed as a ham only about
10 years ago, but he says the professional hardware he worked with
daily scratched the itch until he could gain amateur privileges.
Erickson enjoys homebrewing gear, learning from the foundations of
vintage equipment, and using amateur radio in the scientific space. "An
intense interest to me that crosses the boundary of what I do
professionally and what I do as a radio amateur is what's happening
with the HamSCI Collective... Can you use the observations that are
already being made in the process of conducting the hobby and extract
information from them? It turns out you can -- there's a lot of
ionospheric information buried in there," he said.

The mission of the Haystack Observatory is to develop technology for
radio science applications, to study the structure of our galaxy and
the larger universe, to advance scientific knowledge of our planet and
its space environment, and to contribute to the education of future
scientists and engineers, according to MIT
<https://news.mit.edu/2023/philip-erickson-named-director-mit-haystack-observatory-1215>.

The facility is home to research projects that span spectrum from VLF
to 388 GHz.

"We are almost a completely radio and radar observatory... We have a
geospace group, which is most-closely associated with ARRL type ideas:
the dynamics of the ionosphere and neutral part of the atmosphere, all
the way out into near-Earth space. We are an observational group, so we
use a bunch of different tools -- radars, radios, sometimes data from
satellites, and mostly data from ground-based observations."

Erickson enjoys explaining to the uninitiated that amateur radio is not
only still an active hobby, but that it is an important space for
discovery. "You learn a lot about many different aspects of technical
and science work [in ham radio]," he said.

While his day job keeps him on the edge of radio technology, Erickson
is glad to see amateur radio is keeping pace. He says the coding of
WSJT-X digital weak-signal modes such as FT8 and WSPR created by Dr.
Joe Taylor, K1JT, are more advanced than most hams realize.

"If you were to go to an electrical engineering class, that's what you
would see as the edge of how to pack information into a very small
bandwidth. I enjoy pointing that out to people and getting them to
understand that this other modulation mode is just one of the other
palettes that are available."

==> AMATEUR RADIO IN THE NEWS

ARRL Public Information Officers, Coordinators, and many other
member-volunteers help keep amateur radio and ARRL in the news
<http://www.arrl.org/media-hits>.

"Radio pioneers: the enduring role of 'amateurs' in radio astronomy
<https://physicsworld.com/a/radio-pioneers-the-enduring-role-of-amateurs-in-radio-astronomy/>"

/ Physics World (United Kingdom) January 23, 2024 -- Podcast with
astrophysicist Emma Chapman
<https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/expertiseguide/physics-and-astronomy/dr-emma-chapman.aspx>

about the history of radio astronomy.

Share <newsmedia@arrl.org> any amateur radio media hits you spot with
us.

==> ARRL PODCASTS

On the Air
Sponsored by Icom <http://www.icomamerica.com/en/>

Maintaining a "junk box" -- a collection of odds and ends that can be
used in future projects and repairs -- is a time-honored practice among
hams. Every ham radio junk box has to start somewhere, though, and the
cover story of the January/February 2024 issue of On the Air, "A Fine
Mess: Starting Your Junk Box," by Eric P. Nichols, KL7AJ, offers advice
about how to do just that. The January 2024 episode of the On the Air
podcast digs deeper by going on location to the workshop of W1AW,
ARRL's Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Station. Station Manager Joe Carcia,
NJ1Q, welcomes us into this working space to show us some real-life
junk boxes and discuss how they come in handy.

ARRL Audio News
Listen to ARRL Audio News <http://www.arrl.org/arrl-audio-news>,
available every Friday. ARRL Audio News is a summary of the week's top
news stories in the world of amateur radio and ARRL, along with
interviews and other features.

The On the Air podcast and ARRL Audio News are available on blubrry,
iTunes, and Apple Podcasts -- On the Air
<https://blubrry.com/arrlontheair/> | ARRL Audio News
<https://blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/>.

==> ANNOUNCEMENTS