The National Weather Service will issue Test Tornado Warnings Thursday between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., and again between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.  It’s everyone’s job in these drills to test your tornado plans, seeking safe shelter areas.  Review your actions, and amend your safety plans if needed.

By unanimous approval the membership approved the purchase of a Yaesu Fusion repeater at the March membership meeting. The repeater will initially replace the analog FM repeater that is in service on the 145.480MHz frequency. The Yaesu repeater is a dual-band unit that could possibly work in place of either our VHF or UHF repeater as needed. The new repeater is also dual mode as well. It works both in analog, FM mode and Yaesu’s Fusion digital mode. It can work either analog, digital or be in “auto sense” mode working with either analog or digital traffic as required. More information will be made available to the membership at the next meeting regarding the operation of this new repeater. We expect delivery from Yaesu in about 2 months time.

After spending several hours of voting on amendments to the proposed Constitution and By-Laws, the documents were approved by unanimous vote. The biggest changes to the Constitution and By-Laws had to do with equal opportunity and disbanding policies. These two areas are important in order to secure a 501-(C)7 status with the Internal Revenue Service(IRS). Once we attain that status we will then be able to apply for Grant monies if needed in the future. Outlays of the Society’s treasury for replacement repeater equipment and other items could far exceed what is currently available. Local agency sources for Grant monies will only accept applications from non-profit groups that have official 501 status with the IRS.

There was also a change in the annual membership dues from $10 per person per year to $20 per person per year with adjustments for additional family members. Once the new Constitution and By-Laws were accepted, a motion was made to offer a special deal to current members that they could prepay their dues for out years at the current $10 per person per year amount for up to 5 years. This offer to current members expires at the January, 2016 dinner meeting.

The new Constitution and By-Laws will be posted on this website for ready reference in the future.

Word came to us yesterday that the “100 Years of Radio in Shelby County” and the W9S special event station will be highlighted in next months issue of the ARRL Indiana Section newsletter. We will be the feature article in the newsletter. Pictures of the display and the special event station will be included with the article. We are being noticed around the State for this event.

Bob Burns, W9BU, ARES District 5 EC, needs to find a person to be the Shelby County ARES Emergency Coordinator. If you might be interested in the position, please read Bob’s request below. Contact Bob directly, if you are interested. There is also a link to the ARRL website that describes the job description in detail.

Bob said in his email “Do you know anyone who might be interested? It’s not a difficult job,
but it needs someone who is dedicated to serving the public through
amateur radio. The job description can be found here:

http://www.arrl.org/emergency-coordinator

If you know of anyone, please ask them to contact me.”
Thank you.
Bob Burns W9BU
ARES District 5 EC
Indiana Section ARRL
phone 317-410-7721
email w9bu@arrl.net

• The next members meeting will be held on Monday, January 18, 2021 at the Hopes Point Baptist Church, 1703 Miller Ave, Shelbyville, IN 46176. Meeting time is 7:00 PM.  We will be taking nominations for 2021 Officers from the floor and also holding voting for Officers during the meeting. We will not be having a dinner meeting this year due to the resurgence of the COVID-19 virus here in Shelby County. Please wear an appropriate face mask and practice social distancing during the meeting. See you at the meeting.
• FCC Reduces Proposed Amateur Radio Application Fee to $35
  12/30/2020The FCC has agreed with ARRL and other commenters that its proposed $50 fee for certain amateur radio applications was “too high to account for the minimal staff involvement in these applications.” In a Report and Order (R&O), released on December 29, the FCC scaled back to $35 the fee for a new license application, a special temporary authority (STA) request, a rule waiver request, a license renewal application, and a vanity call sign application. All fees are per application. There will be no fee for administrative updates, such as a change of mailing or email address.

  FCC to Require Email Address on Applications Starting on June 29, 2021. Please read the following post from the ARRL website for what you need to know. This could be a problem for those who don’t have an email address.                            Effective on June 29, 2021, amateur radio licensees and candidates must provide the FCC with an email address on all applications. If no email address is included, the FCC may dismiss the application as “defective.”On September 16, the FCC adopted a Report and Order (R&O) in WT Docket 19-212 on “Completing the Transition to Electronic Filing, Licenses and Authorizations, and Correspondence in the Wireless Radio Services.” The R&O was published on December 29 in the Federal Register. The FCC has already begun strongly encouraging applicants to provide an email address. Once an email address is provided, the FCC will email a link to an official electronic copy of the license grant. An official copy will also be available at any time by accessing the licensee’s password-protected Universal Licensing System (ULS) account.

  Licensees can log into the ULS License Manager System with their FRN and password at any time and update anything in their FCC license record, including adding an email address. For questions or password issues, call the CORES/FRN Help Line, (877) 480-3201 (Monday – Friday, 1300 – 2300 UTC) or reset the password on the FCC website.

  The only way to refrain from providing an email address on an application would be to submit a request to waive the new rule, providing justification for the request. (The FCC would not be obliged to grant such a request.)

  Under Section 97.21 of the new rules, a person holding a valid amateur radio station license “must apply to the FCC for a modification of the license grant as necessary to show the correct mailing and email address, licensee name, club name, license trustee name, or license custodian name.” For a club or military recreation station license, the application must be presented in document form to a club station call sign administrator who must submit the information to the FCC in an electronic batch file.

  Under new Section 97.23, each license must show the grantee’s correct name, mailing address, and email address. “The email address must be an address where the grantee can receive electronic correspondence,” the amended rule will state. “Revocation of the station license or suspension of the operator license may result when correspondence from the FCC is returned as undeliverable because the grantee failed to provide the correct email address.”

• Both Rush County Repeaters are back on the air. There is a net held on the 147.00 MHz repeater on Monday evenings at 7:00PM. Please try to check in if possible. Both repeaters carry a 127.3 Hz PL tone.
• The Indiana Statewide DStar net is held every Thursday evening at 8:00 PM on Reflector 24B. Our local DStar repeater is always on Reflector 24B on Thursday evenings.
• You can catch up on your CW and Digital Slow Scan TV on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 8:50 AM on 144.36 MHz. If you are not fluent in CW, then we invite you to cheat a little and fire up FLDIGI and join on in. After CW we then fire up the Digital SSTV program EasyPal and send pictures back and forth over the airwaves.
• On Sunday evenings you can get your fill of 2 meter simplex activity. Starting around 7:00 PM there is an FM roundtable on 146.52 MHz. Immediately thereafter, there is a 2 Meter SSB simplex roundtable on 144.20 MHz. They are on Upper Sideband. For further details about this roundtable and other simplex 2 meter activities, check out the Indiana Simplex Operators Facebook page. There is more and more 2 meter simplex activities going on these days. Don’t get left out of the fun.

The 2015 Spotter Training Class for Shelby County will be on March 3, 2015 at the Indiana Downs, 4200 Michigan Road, Shelbyville, IN 46176. Class begins at 7:00PM. All Shelby County Amateur Radio Operators are encouraged to attend.

With the special event now behind us, the fun of labeling and addressing almost 700 QSL cards is the opportunity in front of us. The cards are printed and ready for labeling. A few evenings the week of February 8th would probably work out just fine. We are able to use the large meeting room in the basement of the Grover Museum to setup and work through the labeling of the QSL cards.

I think the value in doing this whole special event project in association with the Grover Museum’s “100 Years of Radio in Shelby County” grew each time I got an email from a contact or opened the envelope containing their QSL card and read their recollections of years past spent with radios very similar to the ones in the display at the Museum. I think we did some real good for some folks out there who took the time to visit the Museum’s and the BRVARS’s websites to see pictures of the vintage equipment. Hearing from these folks that they had a radio just like the one in the display, or that they had built a radio like that with their dad when they got their first ham license was really great to hear and made all the work that went into the project seem small compared to the good that it did for a lot of folks.

Please try to help us out when we start processing the cards if you can. Send me an email at inprinter@att.net or just call me at 317.402.5000 if you can help out.

John Walker, Secretary BRVARS

Pictured is Pat Wagner, WA9AAV, working CW(Morse Code) from the lobby of the Grover Museum in Shelbyville. Numerous contacts around country have been made operating the CW mode of transmission.