Martin “Marty” Newingham, AG3I, of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, has been appointed Vice Director of the ARRL Atlantic Division, effective July 15, 2025. Newingham will serve the remainder of a term that expires December 31, 2026.

He replaces Martin J. “Marty” Pittinger, KB3MXM, who resigned from the position in April.

Newingham is an ARRL Life Member and a Gold level contributor to the ARRL Diamond Club.

ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to oppose part of an application that would impact the 70-centimeter amateur band for telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) of satellites. The application, from AST & Science, LLC (AST), requests “unprecedented authorization to 430-440 MHz for a constellation totaling 248 satellites to communicate with five ground stations using up to five channels with up to 256 kHz bandwidth.”

Francis Donovan, W3LPL, gave an excellent presentation on 6-Meter Long Distance Propagation on Thursday, July 17th at the membership Presentation Meeting.

For folks that were unable to attend or that would like a copy of Frank's Power Point presentation, please email secretary@w3vpr.org.

Due to the size of the Power Point deck (> 2 megabytes) we can't upload it to the website.

The Anne Arundel Radio Club operates several repeaters.

2-meter repeaters

The Crownsville repeater (147.075+ PL 107.2) is our main repeater and is located on the Anne Arundel County tower on Harkins Rd, near the Maryland Public Television tower. There are additional input sites (voter repeaters), all using the same frequency and PL tones, located as follows:

The github page is here:

https://github.com/VA3HDL/hamdashboard

MFJ has announced it will shut down manufacturing of its own brand as well as those marketed under other brand names. The company will continue to sell current in-stock inventory.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced an upcoming change to the Commission Registration System (CORES) that licensees use to pay any application or regulatory fees, manage or reset a password on an existing FRN, or request a new FRN. Beginning March 29, 2024, multifactor authentication will be implemented. Users will be prompted to request a six-digit secondary verification code, which will be sent to the email address(es) associated with each username. The user will then need to enter the code into CORES before they can continue.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a job opening that might be a good opportunity for recently graduated amateur radio operators who have knowledge of the spectrum and RF.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a job opening that might be a good opportunity for recently graduated amateur radio operators who have knowledge of the spectrum and RF.

The National Weather Service Baltimore/Washington Skywarn has added an additional Skywarn Basics Class to the schedule.

The new class would be held at the University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park. The class is scheduled for Saturday, April 20 from 3:30-5:30 pm. There is another class arlt the Prince George's County EOC on April 18 and at the Alleghany County Department of Emergency Services in Cumberland on May 17.

To register, go to https://www.weather.gov/lwx/skywarn.

The Case Amateur Radio Club, W8EDU, the club station at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is asking for amateur radio operators to help with a research project centered around the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse.

W8EDU club member Adam Goodman, W7OKE, said the project centers around studying the effects of the eclipse on propagation to better understand the recombination time of the ionosphere.

There is a new talk net on the W3VPR Davidsonville repeaters.

The Board of Directors has agreed to allow the Bowie Wireless Association to use the 147.105 and 444.400 repeaters for their weekly net. Both repeaters have a positive offset and have a PL tone of 107.2.

The net will be held on Wednesday evenings at 7 pm Eastern time.

The Bowie Wireless Association Net was previously held on the K3ERA repeater, but the W3VPR Davidsonville repeaters are more accessible to many members. The Bowie club is presently considering their own repeater in the future.

On January 30, 2024, US Senators Roger Wicker (MS) and Richard Blumenthal (CT) introduced S.3690, the Senate companion bill to H.R.4006, introduced last June. Both bills reflect the Congressional campaign efforts by ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® to eliminate homeowner association land use restrictions that prohibit, restrict, or impair the ability of an Amateur Radio Operator to install and operate amateur station antennas on residential properties they own.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully landed their Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on January 19, 2024. Just before touchdown, SLIM released two small lunar surface probes, LEV-1 and LEV-2.

LEV-2 collects data while moving on the lunar surface, and LEV-1 receives the data.

Twice a year, ARRL offers an event designed to promote Amateur Radio to our youth. Share the excitement with your kids or grandkids, a Scout troop, a church or the general public!

Kids Day is designed to give on-the-air experience to young people and hopefully foster interest in getting a license of their own. It is also intended to give older hams a chance to share their station and love for Amateur Radio with their children.

ARRL® has heard from many members concerned about their print subscriptions to CQ magazine. CQ magazine is not an ARRL publication, however ARRL members enjoy the ability to pursue earning the CQ Worked All Zones (WAZ) and Worked All Prefixes (WPX) awards through Logbook of The World (LoTW).

CQ Editor Rich Moseson, W2VU, acknowledged the delays in delivering CQ magazine. He indicated that the November and December issues are delayed but plans are to get them out to the readership as soon as circumstances permit.

The page for submitting Service Hours is temporarily offline. I am redoing it because it has become overly complex with 40 categories of entry, some only pertaining to a single person.

I'm also considering replacing it with a fillable PDF form.

Contrary to belief, the service hours are internal, as only organizations deemed a charity need to track this for their exempt tax filings.

Webmaster

Santa Net is back on 3.916 MHz for the 18th year! Starting Friday, November 24th, good girls and boys can talk to Santa Claus, via amateur radio, nightly starting at 7:05 PM (Central). The Santa Net will run every night through Christmas Eve, December 24, 2023.

Pete Thomson (KE5GGY), of The 3916 Nets, commented on The Santa Net. He said, "What started 18 years ago as a small gathering on Christmas eve has really grown over the years. This year we expect to connect around 1,000 kids with Santa.”