Changes at the ARRL

If you recall back in 2010 I made some observations when Kay, N3KN became president and Brennan, N4QX became the new technical relations manager.

Well now Kay is concluding her position, and Rick Roderick, K5UR is the new president.  And long time chief executive officer David Sumner, K1ZZ, is being replaced by Tom Gallagher, NY2RF.

There is limited information to make any speculations, but K5UR's QRZ.com profile indicates he is the contester type.  And while that doesn't exactly impress me, at least Tom, NY2RF has HSMM listed on his QRZ profile.

The kind of guy I'd really like to see in any official position would be into homebrewing, HSMM, and also is an active GNU Radio code contributor.

But that is just me.  I like to see things moving forward.  And less promoting of the "When All Else Fails" as that is synonymous to me with hanging on to the past, aka new technology is not to be trusted.

It's 2016, and I feel for the most part the commercial networks are stable, and our role as hams for emergency communications as compared to the past is greatly diminished.

I feel its time to focus on one of our other major basis and purpose pillars, to advance the radio art.  Makerspaces are todays do it yourselfers.  And I think it's important that we get involved with these groups.  Ham radio operators have long been some of the original open source, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) proponents.

Maybe it's because when I got into the hobby in the 90's it was still relevant, and had some lure to a newbie.  Well it's still relevant, it is just not as obvious to the casual observer like when I got into it.  You basically just have to really into learning things as ham radio will always be an experimenters playground.  It would just be nice if we had some really cool SDR advancement to boast about rather than hey look, your Grandpa was into this.

{Edit 2/17/16}
Well this is a good start:

http://www.arrl.org/news/new-amateur-extra-question-pool-puts-greater-emphasis-on-digital-sdrs-propagation