Author: kc9wwh

Hello again, I am pleased to make several announcements today – all of which I think are positive!

First off, we are finally kicking off a round of periodic updates in order to get our database updated. I realize that it’s a long time coming, but we had a lot of fixing to do this year, so it took a back seat for a while. Now that we’re back on track, we expect the periodic updates to once again continue. Be looking for the update request, and please make sure to update it and promptly return it, because…

…it won’t be long before our next membership meeting! This one will be important. It will be your chance to vote on the new policy changes that your board is proposing. It’s the culmination of almost nine months of bi-weekly meetings, working to clarify our policies and bring them into the presentday. You’ll find the proposed document by clicking this link. I encourage you to review the document and be prepared to vote at our next meeting. We can’t get you the meeting notification if we don’t have your correct contact information, so make sure it’s up to date!

About the proposed policy changes – I want to make sure that we’re clear on why we proposed these changes. As many of you are aware, spectrum everywhere is becoming scarce, even in the amateur bands. The upside of new technology is that it’s making it easier than ever to put a repeater on the air. We want to be sure that everyone who wants to put a system together can, and that everyone is well protected and can operate in harmony. We want to make it easy to receive a coordination, and if issues arise, we want to be crystal clear about who holds what  esponsibilities and what the process is that goes into each coordination recommendation. The process should be completely transparent.

Let’s not fool ourselves – our spectrum is valuable. If we don’t use it (or if we don’t use it in an efficient way with little need for FCC involvement) we’ll lose it. Simple as that. In fact, our coordinator recognized the value of modeling well over a decade ago, and while the operational policy did not
support those efforts, it was and is in fact the only way to gain better use of our spectrum. Adjacent state coordinators recognized this as well, and were benefited by the approach.

I think you’ll agree that our policy is based on common sense, fair play, and best engineering practices. I also think that you’ll agree that we’re again setting the standard for professional, well-done repeater coordination in Wisconsin.

Next, I’d like to mention that whether or not I’m re-elected as Chairman (and this is not me campaigning, I promise!) I have recommended to the board that we bring back a second membership meeting that will be held in other parts of the state. The reality is that Milwaukee is a huge population
center and a large portion of coordination’s are held there, so it makes sense to hold a meeting in that area. However, there is no reason to not hold a meeting elsewhere in the state as well. I think that we need to get back to two meetings a year now that we’ve gotten caught up with the basic issues that we need to address. My hope is that will encourage more involvement and interaction with what we’re trying to accomplish.

Please look for the meeting notice in the mail after the first of the year, and please PLEASE plan on being there. I would love to see a large crowd and have some engagement from our stakeholders.

And, as always, I encourage you to contact me at any time. My email is chairman@wi-repeaters.org.

Thank you, and 73.
Chris, W9JOL

Greetings! I want to get you up to speed on what your board has been up to. I know it seems like we’ve been pretty quiet, but to be honest we’ve been more active than we’ve been in many years.

The Board of Directors has been meeting at least twice a month since March, working to create proposed changes to our policy and by-laws for members to review and ultimately vote on.

Why all the work? Well, as we started to plow through our agenda at the first meeting, it was obvious that our policy and by-laws were outdated and not very functional. It was my feeling that any of the cosmetic changes we were discussing would really be meaningless without a strong foundation to build upon. So we made the decision to forego (for now) coordination updates and many of the formalities of years past while we work on these difficult but wholesale changes to how we conduct business.

As of this writing, we are 99% finished with the proposed policy changes, and we have a meeting scheduled in November to hammer out the proposed bylaw changes. Right after that meeting takes place we’ll be posting the proposals here, and sending out snail mail to our members asking to review them.

Here’s the important part: We need YOU to participate. Look at the documents. Review them. Ask questions. We will be asking the membership to vote on the changes at our next membership meeting in March 2017. It is important that we get these changes done so that we can put our organization back on track and get back to the bigger non-policy changes and ideas that we have for the future.

As I’ve said in the beginning, my goal as the current Chairman is to be able to hand off a strong, focused organization to the next Chairman. It should be more modern, streamlined, and in tune to the spectrum challenges we face in the future. I don’t look at my term as Chairman as ceremonial. I look
at it as an opportunity to get to work and position the organization for the future.

I hope that when you see the proposed policy and by-law changes that your Board has worked on diligently to craft, you’ll agree that I met my goal.

As always, I welcome your feedback. As others have found, you’ll always get a reply from me. You can email me at: chairman@wi-repeaters.org.

Thanks and 73,
Chris, W9JOL

Your WAR, Inc. board continues to work on policy updates to streamline operations and bring more benefit to you, the repeater owner or operator. Among these changes is updating the process on how we coordinate a repeater as well as providing more transparency to this process. As we begin work on this, I wanted to provide a brief note on the addition or change of emission type of a coordinated repeater system.

As most of you are aware, the past decade or so has brought greatly expanded availability of digital voice technology to the arena of ham radio repeaters. Whether it’s a re-purposed APCO Project 25 (P25) or DMR equipment or a proprietary ham radio technology like D-STAR or System Fusion, these “new” emission types have generally not been taken into consideration by many coordination bodies as part of the process. WAR, Inc. would like to take this opportunity to announce that not only are we revising how we determine a new coordination for these operational modes, but that we also need to be advised when an existing repeater that is already coordinated is modified to utilize these emission types.

Because of the significant differences in transmitted bandwidth and characteristics of the various digital emissions, and the impacts on co-channel and adjacent channel users, it’s imperative that a revised coordination request is submitted to WAR so that we can process the changes and re-run coverage studies with the new emission type(s) accounted for.

In the near future, I’ll provide another brief article on some of the technical challenges associated with spectrum management, coordination and the methodologies we use in making decisions when you submit a coordinator request to us.

Jim Westover KB9KBK
Vice-Chairman