WSEZ864

Kurt?

If you read what I wrote, you will see I had bolded a portion of your statement and addressed THAT as being non-factual. The other text left in your statement I quoted was left in for context. I stand by that: It is not factual to say the ARRL's stance is based upon "hey, you are not good enough to help as you do not have the same ticket we do". That is a feeling, a perception, not official policy. None of that is relevant. If you do hold a ham ticket, you probably know that the ARRL is about ham radio. It has always been about ham radio. It's about ham radio on this issue too. Now you are disturbed because they are STILL all about ham radio. Being about ham radio, they asked ham radio operators to sign a petition they will state is from their represented group. Other radio services are irrelevant to their mission statement (to serve their members, which are and always have been amateur radio operators). Very simple, and no sense of self righteousness or feeling of GMRS not being good enough has any bearing on this. See the "VW club vs Lamborghini discussion" example in my post you quoted. Feelings again. Placing ham radio antennas is not an exclusive right, other services stand to benefit by relaxed HOA antenna restrictions. It should be easy to understand that the ARRL is a dedicated ham radio outfit. Again, they don't represent any other service, just a ham radio outfit representing hams, why would rejecting other services from a petition representing their membership be surprising. If only a GMRS organization also presented a petition demanding the same rights, it could add 50% more operators to the push. If pointing out that a ham radio organization is dedicated to ham radio and it is not about demeaning anyone else is "waxing poetically", I guess I'm guilty, but not sorry. I was/am not aware of any change in stance by the ARRL. I am not an ARRL member and do not stay on top of all of their activities. I joined when I first got my amateur license because it was the thing to do. I held a membership for a few years, but stopped for several reasons, mainly that the magazine had evolved to be an ad catalogue and that they made several unilateral decisions while claiming to represent their membership. Since they never polled their membership on those issues, I could see I was not being represented. To pay membership in an ad campaign to an organization that did not represent my views didn't make sense. No, not sarcastic at all. A serious suggestion on a positive, constructive way to solve the problem of GMRS licensees not having representation, assuming you ever wanted a solution. I didn't say you were wrong, I said the statement you made was not based in fact. I tried to clear up what was not factual above, although my post you quoted seemed very clear. The ARRL did not reject GMRS licensees because they were "not good enough" as you had alleged. GMRS users, CB users, business radio, marine radio, GMDSS, GROL are ALL outside the scope of an amateur radio organization and the ARRL fails to represent ALL of them in that context, regardless of technical levels required of each service.

Not so much "unpopular", but just not factual. You can choose to look at it that way, but the fact is that the ARRL represents Amateur Radio. It's only a VERY "self-centered" amateur radio outfit saying "Hey FCC, our membership (amateur radio operators) speaks.", nothing more, nothing less. This has absolutely nothing to do with being "good enough", those are your feelings. This is like joining a Volkswagen Club and complaining that they don't want to talk about your Lamborghini because it's "not good enough", LOL, when really, it's just not what the club is about, regardless of one's feelings. The ARRL (I am not a current member) simply wants to represent ham radio, as they always have. Their membership is amateur radio licensees and the fact is that they don't represent any other service, nor claim to, and never have. Even though they too are affected by this, the ARRL still doesn't speak for CB'ers or Marine VHF users, they don't speak for GMRS licensees, nor do they try to speak for radio licensees in the GMDSS or GROL categories, even though both of those exams put at least two of the three amateur radio exams to shame. Oddly enough, most of these services also stand to benefit by ARRL's efforts. This is an excellent opportunity for you to start an organization that represents GMRS and FRS (if they're good enough) users and create a petition. You have an important cause to unite behind, you have a venue here to announce and discuss your intentions, websites are easy to set up. Really nothing to hinder your success at all and a relevant voice seems to be needed.

You can phone in reports if your phone is working. Ditto email.

Our local coordinator, who makes the decision on dedicating the repeater, gets word in several ways: First, the NWS will notify of spotter activation on your local weather radio channels. This is the most fail-safe method. The NWS will also allow you to sign up for activation alerts on your cell phone and via email. I just spoke to our local coordinator to verify my facts and he uses both the phone alert and monitors weather radio (162.4mHz here) when there are threatening conditions. Once the decision is made to activate, announcements go out on the repeaters and those repeaters dedicated to Skywarn have a net control person that belays other traffic. While not an actual notification, when weather dictates activating, a notice usually appears on the hazardous weather statement. Here is a current example of bad weather (gale warning) expected here in my area, but not severe enough to activate spotters. Note the bottom line in red: [quote]Hazardous Weather Outlook National Weather Service Baltimore MD/Washington DC 409 AM EDT Mon Oct 13 2025 ANZ530>543-DCZ001-MDZ008-011-013-014-016>018-504-506-508- VAZ053>057-527-140815- Chesapeake Bay north of Pooles Island MD- Chesapeake Bay from Pooles Island to Sandy Point MD- Chesapeake Bay from Sandy Point to North Beach MD- Chesapeake Bay from North Beach to Drum Point MD- Chesapeake Bay from Drum Point MD to Smith Point VA- Tidal Potomac from Key Bridge to Indian Head MD- Tidal Potomac from Indian Head to Cobb Island MD- Tidal Potomac from Cobb Island MD to Smith Point VA- Patapsco River including Baltimore Harbor- Chester River to Queenstown MD-Eastern Bay- Choptank River to Cambridge MD and the Little Choptank River- Patuxent River to Broomes Island MD- Tangier Sound and the inland waters surrounding Bloodsworth Island-District of Columbia-Cecil-Southern Baltimore- Prince Georges-Anne Arundel-Charles-St. Marys-Calvert- Central and Southeast Montgomery-Central and Southeast Howard- Southeast Harford-Fairfax-Arlington/Falls Church/Alexandria- Stafford-Spotsylvania-King George- Central and Southeast Prince William/Manassas/Manassas Park- 409 AM EDT Mon Oct 13 2025 This Hazardous Weather Outlook is for the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, Tidal Potomac River, and I-95 corridor through central Maryland, northern Virginia, and District of Columbia. .DAY ONE...Today and Tonight A Gale Warning is in effect for the Chesapeake Bay and lower tidal Potomac River from Cobb Point to Smith Point through 8 AM. .DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...Tuesday through Sunday No hazardous weather is expected at this time. .SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT... Spotter activation is not expected at this time. $$[/quote] Because there is no activation that I can find right now, I cannot provide an example of weather alerts where spotters ARE being activated, but it would appear at the bottom of the Weather Alert Statement. There is a bad snowstorm in the CA mountains right now, but they have not posted spotter info, surprisingly

It may just be that no one wants to assume a leadership role. If you're interested, you might want to contact ARES and ask what it takes to get affiliated. It might also take a "motion" at a club meeting to start the ball rolling, but if no one is interested, it probably won't go anywhere. We do support ARES and hold a weekly net, but do not have any club activity related to RACES. I found the in-person classes very interesting and well worth attending. I guess I will have to finish out the other classes I'm missing online. There have not been any advanced classes within reasonable driving distance here in literally years. There is only one local class on the schedule right now and it's just a "Basic", as are the several currently scheduled in VA. There is one "Flood" class coming up in VA that is over 2-1/2 hours away.

I'm registered as a Skywarn Spotter and have had several of the in-person classes (Basic, Winter Weather and Severe Weather). If we ever have any other classes nearby, I'll attend. I did learn a LOT about weather at each of my classes. Our local 2 meter ham repeater becomes dedicated to Skywarn if spotters are officially activated by the NWS. Been a Spotter for over 10 years and I have only occasionally had to report the onset of conditions such as really heavy thunderstorms and hail at my location. Things have to be pretty bad to warrant making a report. We don't activate for most storms unless they are identified as 'severe'. The most useful experience I've had with it is when we had a tornado pass within a mile of the house. We seldom have tornadoes here,so it was pretty interesting. I was in the yard next to the truck with an HT, watching and ready to go, and the constant live reports helped us decide what to do. Local news typically lags by 3 to 10 minutes for exact location info and would have been of little help.

For anyone wanting to upgrade their ham license from Technician to General, here is an upcoming "General" class by a great instructor. While the class is intended for upgrade to General, there are no prerequisites requiring a Tech license and if you study for General, you'll breeze through the Tech exam. Excellent opportunity to learn about more than just the exam answers:

"Knife-edge refraction"?

Our local emergency communications system coordinates with our club on 'Field Day'. Their mobile EmComm RV is impressive and they bring it out to our location, set up and allow us to operate from it. They have radios installed for every common service, antennas mounted on the vehicle and a patch panel on the side that allows them to use remote antenna connections.

True to form, they disable the public-facing facilities and services first.

Some outfits may still be testing, but we (MMARC under Laurel) canceled our session for tonight due to not being able to upload results. We usually upload at the session and are done by the time the candidate leaves. Not sure why the boss elected to cancel vs sitting on the results until the FCC is accepting the data. I'll see him at the club meeting Friday and ask.

I just got word from our coordinator that our October amateur radio licensing exam session (tomorrow evening) has been cancelled. A week ago when I RSVP'ed as one of the VEs, we had two candidates pre-registered (and usually that number doubles or triples at exam time), so I am assuming we cancelled this session due to the shutdown.

Congratulations!!

Good luck with your endeavor! I really don't think it will change anyone's mind about anything, and honestly most hams don't even think about 'looking down' on anyone (except CB, ugh). Many hams, myself and about half the members of my amateur radio club included, are also GMRS licensed. We recognize each radio service is different and has it's own niche. GMRS serves local contacts in a personal context, keeping in touch with their families, serves people engaged in activities where close-range commo is needed and seems to engage those who don't care about radio technicalities. Ham radio serves those looking for long distance capabilities, solid emergency communications and those to whom electronics and radio theory is interesting. Making it a competition or trying to make either radio service something it isn't simply doesn't make sense. If you want to use GMRS for GMRS purposes, great, that's what it's for. If you want ham radio capability or if you feel like there is some sort of rivalry, be a ham. It's not that hard and a lot of the equipment is the same. I have a CB radio, a marine VHF radio (I have a boat), a GMRS license and radios, a ham license and radios, a GROL+radar endorsement and a GMDSS operator's license. Each radio service has a specific purpose and the only service I see people trying to make it something it isn't is GMRS for some reason.