The ARRL Letter Vol. 13, No. 5 March 10, 1994 Ham-boater credits Amateur Radio in Gulf of Mexico sea rescue Two men rescued from a sinking boat in the Gulf of Mexico credit Amateur Radio for saving their lives. On March 2, Larry Hooker, KB5ZNY, of Thaxton, Mississippi, and his sailing partner, Rhett White, were returning from Honduras on Hooker's 45-ft sailing vessel Off The Hook, when they ran into an unexpected storm and high seas. Hooker had been in contact with his friend Randall O'Brian, KD5ZH, of West Point, Mississippi, since hoisting anchor on February 6, on 80, 40, and 20 Meters. Hooker had visited his daughter, Tina Hooker, KB5YNN, a missionary with Global Outreach on the northeastern coast of Honduras, in an area accessible only by air or sea. "Tina's US Novice license allowed her to operate from Honduras," Larry Hooker said. "I was taking her a rig, along with other supplies. Larry, who upgraded to General class about six months ago, was looking forward to regular skeds with his daughter by radio. Larry's friend Randall O'Brian was his link back to the States. "Larry and I made two radio contacts a day," O'Brian said, "starting out on 75 Meters, then on 40 and 20 Meters as he got farther out." Hooker arrived at his destination on February 17, and after spending some time with his daughter, began the return trip on February 26. All went well until March 1. "Larry reported being in bad weather," "O'Brian said, "and he was using his radar to pick his way around the most severe thunderstorms. He had lowered his sails and was under power. The weather forecast had been wrong." Things began to to deteriorate on March 2, when Hooker reported to O'Brian that he was in gale force winds and high seas (20 to 25 ft). "Larry was concerned about having enough fuel to make it back to Mobile, Alabama. We started making a contact every two hours the remainder of the day," O'Brian said. At 4 PM Hooker reported taking on water, the seas still running 20 to 25 ft. O'Brian called the Coast Guard and advised them of Larry's situation, and the Coast Guard started an every-other-hour check on Larry -- coming up on Hooker's and O'Brian's regular 75-meter frequency, 3862 kHz. "At about 5 PM Larry reported the situation as very bad, with no improvement in sight," O'Brian said. "This was the last contact that anyone had with him the rest of the night." O'Brian and others amateurs listening tried all that night to contact Off The Hook, as did the Coast Guard. About 5 AM on March 3 the Coast Guard in New Orleans called O'Brian to say that their station at Corpus Christi, Texas, had picked up a call from Larry, but couldn't establish contact with him. They asked O'Brian to try. "I had a dream that night," O'Brian said, "that I would be able to contact Larry again. And at about 5:30 AM I did. He was in an emergency situation, on the verge of sinking. I contacted the Coast Guard and they again came on 3862 kHz and were able to contact Larry." The Coast Guard dispatched a jet aircraft from New Orleans to drop pumps to Off The Hook, which was now about 250 miles southeast of Mobile. The two sailors, although by now exhausted, tried to pump the water out of their boat. A merchant vessel, the Turn Arrow, was only 16 miles away and quickly came to help in the rescue. "We amateurs had radio contact with the Coast Guard in New Orleans all day," O'Brian said, "and were able to get reports from Larry. I was notified by the Coast Guard that their cutter, the Cushing, was being dispatched from Mobile, and would reach Larry at 4:30 PM." At 5:15 PM the Coast Guard reported that Off the Hook was under tow and that Hooker and White were bruised and exhausted but otherwise OK. Off The Hook was towed all night, but sank about 10 AM on March 4. They were unable to keep the water pumped out. During the operation Hooker's wife, Teresa, who is not a ham, listened to the communications. After the two men were picked up she told the Tupelo Daily Journal "Now that I know he's on his way home, I may get a little sleep tonight, but I'm going to leave the ham radio on." "Larry and his wife came to visit on March 6," Randall O'Brian said. "Larry told me 'I wouldn't be alive today if it were not for the efforts of Amateur Radio operators.'" "The Lord used Amateur Radio operators to save our lives," Hooker said. ARRL, FCC AGREE TO NEW COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT The ARRL and the Field Operations Bureau (FOB) of the Federal Communications Commission have signed a new agreement concerning the use of amateur volunteers. The agreement is a revised and expanded version of one entered into in 1984, and spells out the roles of amateurs, as trained and registered Official Observers, as well as the role of the FOB. The volunteers continue to be known as the ARRL Amateur Auxiliary ("AA") to the Field Operations Bureau. While the new agreement continues to place initial information gathering at the local level, ie, in conjunction with regional FOB offices, it specifies a more centralized system for presenting information to the FOB in cases where enforcement is requested. This will be done between the office of the Chief, FOB, and the League's Washington office. The new agreement also adds an FOB agreement to protect the identities of Amateur Auxiliary members, to the extent allowed by law, when the FCC institutes an enforcement proceeding involving information provided by the AA. The FOB also agrees to assist the ARRL in the training of volunteers and in publicizing the objectives and accomplishments of the program. The new agreement became effective February 26, 1994. The full text of the agreement will appear in May QST. FCC EXTENDS COMMENT PERIOD IN 'VANITY' CALL SIGN PLAN The FCC has granted an ARRL request to extend the comment deadline in its "vanity" call sign proposal, in PR Docket 93-305. The comment deadline was extended to April 21, 1994; the reply comment deadline was extended to May 23, 1994. The Commission's Notice of Proposed Rule Making was released December 29, 1993, with an original comment deadline of March 7, 1994. The League said more time was needed for response because of the importance of the proposal to amateurs and therefore the need to ensure fairness in whatever system was adopted. In granting the League's request the FCC said "it is desirable that the record be as complete as possible and that it reflect the views of the amateur community." An ARRL ad-hoc committee on this proposal includes Directors Steve Mendelsohn, WA2DHF; Frank Butler, W4RH; Tom Comstock, N5TC; John Kanode, N4MM; and Brad Wyatt, K6WR. Members should address their comments to "Docket 93-305 Committee," and send them to ARRL HQ. More information on the proposal is in February 1994 QST on pages 9 and 84 to 86. FCC ALLOWS MORE TIME FOR RF EXPOSURE PLAN The FCC has extended the reply comment deadline in its proposal to adopt new standards for exposure to RF radiation. The Notice of Proposed Rule Making, in ET Docket 93-62, would adopt standards already observed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) in 1992, and is opposed by the ARRL. The League already has told the FCC that the proceeding should be terminated, and cited a number of reasons, among them that it isn't really an NPRM since it doesn't actually propose to change anything, and that it shouldn't even apply to the average amateur installation. The League said that those amateurs remotely likely to be affected by new standards are those forced to use indoor antennas because of restrictions against outside installations. The FCC said it was extending the deadline in response to an industry group, the "Telecommunications Industry Association," who said that more than 1200 pages of comments had been filed with the Commission and that not enough time had been allowed for evaluation of that much material. The FCC said it recognized "the complexity of the issues raised" by its proposal. The reply comment deadline was extended from February 24, 1994, to April 25, 1994. A full story on the League's comments to the FCC in this matter will appear in April QST. BRIEFS * If you have photos and/or stories about amateurs in action following the Los Angeles earthquake, please send them to Rick Palm, K1CE, at HQ. * The memorial fund raising by the Northern California DX Foundation for Jim Rafferty, N6RJ, who died in June 1993, raised nearly $8,000 from 125 individuals and organizations. The donors' call signs or organizational names were inscribed on a plaque presented to Jim's widow, Shirley Rafferty, and subsequently will be displayed at the Anaheim, California, Ham Radio Outlet, where Jim worked. * Wayne Green, W2NSD, editor and publisher of 73 Magazine, has announced that his company will begin publication of a magazine entitled Cold Fusion, in April. The editor will be Eugene F. Mallove, ScD., a former chief science writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a press release. * Astronaut Ken Cameron, KB5AWP, has been named Director of Operations-Russia and manager of NASA operational activities at Star City and at the Russian control center at Kaliningrad. He will work with Russian Space Agency engineers and flight controllers on the US-Russia cooperative space program, including supervising NASA astronaut training at Star City and developing plans and procedures to support joint space shuttle/Russian Mir space station flights and space station development. He is expected to command one of the early shuttle docking missions with Mir. Cameron has flown on two SAREX shuttle flights, STS-37 in 1991 and STS-56 in 1993, both of them "all-ham" shuttles. * The Austrian Communication Authority has opened a block of special call signs for special operations there. The 26 available calls will be OE--A to OE--Z, with the number assigned depending on the station's geographic location. 14 calls will be reserved for club stations of the Austrian national association, OVSV, with the remaining 12 available for others. * More than 120 people died in an earthquake in Indonesia in February, and local press said that ham radio was the only communication initially available from the affected area. The town of Liwa in the province of Lampung suffered the greatest damage and loss of life, and a government official told The Jakarta Post that "we have to use ham radio to communicate with Liwa." (Thanks WA8QNR) * Citing "news hungry hams," the Radio Society of Great Britain has added a telephone hotline to augment its on-the- air Amateur Radio news bulletins. The RSGB on-the-air service is similar to ARRL's in that it is available on voice and packet; but theirs is a script prepared weekly, while ARRL issues bulletins on a daily basis. * Russia's Radio magazine continues to suffer from rampant inflation there. The general-interest electronics magazine has seen its print run drop from more than a million in early 1991 to less than 400,000 in late 1993. The cover price of the January 1991 issue was 1.2 rubles; in January 1994 it had risen to 950 rubles. Because of the currency inflation, the magazine sells subscriptions only for six-month periods. * Editors of the newsletters of ARRL affiliated clubs recently received an offer of a free one-year "subscription" to The ARRL Letter. We expect this to add a considerable number of new readers to our rolls. Since news is a two-way street, we look forward to hearing from these new readers; let us know when you have news that might be of regional or national interest. * In January, former Headquarters staffer Vern Chambers, W1JEQ, died. He was 78 years old and, although he'd left the staff for greener pastures in 1958, he worked for the League for more than 25 years. According to former ARRL General Manager John Huntoon, W1RW, Chambers went to work in the HQ mail room as a youngster and not a licensed amateur. He got the bug, helped out in the lab, and eventually became a QST technical author and manager of the lab's Technical Information Service. "Vern always showed a special understanding for problems faced by the average beginner," Huntoon said. * April QST "League Lines" warns amateurs that "A commercial company is sending notices in the mail to hams whose Amateur Radio licenses are about to expire, offering to renew the hams' licenses for a fee" ($5). This is something you can do yourself, for the cost of a stamp. The League is about to undertake the same project, but with no fee involved. League members will receive a notice about 90 days before their license expiration date, along with an FCC Form 610 and an envelope addressed to the FCC in Gettysburg. Simple! The first notices will be going out in a couple of weeks; the job involves a lot of merging, purging, and cross-checking of the FCC data base to ensure that the right people, and only the right people, get the notices. * The robot packet station counter aboard SAREX flight STS-60 in February clicked over more than 4000 connects with amateurs, while Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, U5MIR, brought his experience aboard the Mir space station to the flight. He planned a visit back home to Russia, where he will work with fellow cosmonauts, before returning to the US to prepare for STS-63 in January 1995. Vladimir Titov, U1MIR, also is scheduled to fly on that shuttle. * The FCC announced in late February that some of its information is now available on the Internet, including the FCC Daily Digest, news releases, some public notices, and the text of speeches by Commission officials. File names are listed in the Daily Digest. The FCC's Internet address is ftp.fcc.gov And the March 9 New York Times notes in a story that Russians are taking to e-mail in a big way, some of them even being able to access the Internet. "We can use the Library of Congress in five minutes, while it takes a magazine from the US three months to reach Russia," a Russian scientist said. * The Central States VHF Society's annual conference will be held July 28 to 30, 1994, in Memphis, Tennessee, and a call for papers has been issued. For information on the technical program or submission of papers, contact Joel Harrison, WB5IGF, 528 Miller Rd, Judsonia AR 72081. * The commander for space shuttle and SAREX flight STS- 67 in early 1995 will be Steve Oswald, KB5TSR. He will join SAREX veteran Payload Specialist Ron Parise, WA4SIR. * Joe Hertzberg, N3EA, died February 14, 1994, in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was 86. He previously was K3JH. He was first licensed in 1926. During World War II he was involved in the development of electronic navigation systems and was decorated by both the United States and England. After the war he went to work for RCA and in 1956 was named RCA Man of the Year. He ended his career as a corporate vice president of RCA. In the late 1960s he became active in Amateur Radio once again and his station included a full-size 80 meter cubical quad on a 115-ft Telrex "Big Bertha" rotating pole that was featured in a 1970 QST. He put his station to good use following several natural disasters, including a 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua. 10 years ago in The ARRL Letter The Volunteer Examiner program moved closer to reality as the FCC appointed the first five VE Coordinators and issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making to permit VEs and VECs to recover expenses. The ARRL had not yet applied for VEC status, waiting until the rules regarding the recovery of expenses were enacted. The FCC also listed 16 functions that VECs would be expected to perform. The League had asked the FCC to write the reimbursement rules without going through the NPRM procedure but the Commission declined, saying it wanted to have a public comment period. In its NPRM, the FCC set a $4 maximum per exam. In Connecticut, the Department of Environmental Protection was behind a bill in the legislature that would regulate some sources of RF radiation, the general concern at that time being microwave dish antennas. Testimony before the Committee on the Environment said that amateurs should be exempted from any such bill, and one committee member said that it was never the committee's intention to regulate amateurs. Following the successful space shuttle operation of Owen Garriott, W5LFL, the previous November, the League and NASA were talking informally about future operations; Astronaut Tony England, W0ORE, was scheduled to be aboard the shuttle in early 1985. Hams in southern California got word from the US Olympic Committee that Amateur Radio would be permitted at the '84 Games in Los Angeles, to handle traffic from the Olympic Village. Running for charity Fred Doob, AA8FQ, raised more than $2000 for the Childrens Cancer Research Fund while running the Los Angeles Marathon on March 6. Fred made more than 400 contacts on 144 and 440 MHz using a hand held transceiver provided by ICOM America; ICOM donated $5 to the CCRF for each contact Fred made. Fred, 47, topped his run last November in the New York City Marathon by 100 contacts and his time was better, too, by 15 minutes. "I average about 3.5 hours in a marathon without radio, and about 5 hours when I operate. Listening to the radio takes your mind away from the mental concentration necessary to run 26 miles." Fred's operation was coordinated by the Baldwin Hills Amateur Radio Club, organized by President Ed Walker, WA6MDJ. Fred's principal net control, Keith Glispie, WA6TFD, "did a great job. But more people should use phonetics; it's hard to hear when you're running," Doob said. KCOP-TV, Channel 11, ran a story about AA8FQ's run for charity the evening of the marathon, with film both of him, at the finish line, and inside the Amateur Radio communications tent. Amateurs provide a medical net as well as a "start" and a "finish" net. Greg Powell, KD6AIS, helped arrange the television coverage. Fred Doob will be at the Dayton Hamvention; look for him at the Solder-It booth. Profile: Midwest Division Vice Director Bruce Frahm, K0BJ And it's yet another ham who won't be turning in his call sign for a "vanity" call: K0 B ruce J. Frahm, the ARRL Midwest Division's new vice director, elected last November. Bruce and his wife, Janice, grow wheat and corn on a 2800-acre family farm in the northwest corner of Kansas, near Colby. Fifty miles north and they'd be in Nebraska; 50 miles west is the Colorado state line. Bruce, 42, graduated from Kansas State University, a well-known hotbed of Amateur Radio and home of W0 Quack Quack Quack. Bruce got his degree in computer science and uses it today to track farm work, finances, and especially water usage. Like thousands of others, his farm draws on the Ogallala Aquifer, which is dropping dangerously. "In my college days," Bruce says, "computer studies were in the College of Arts and Sciences, and almost entirely software-oriented. Like other universities, we worked from terminals and shared a central computer, in this case an IBM 360." Bruce, who's active in his local group, the Trojan Amateur Radio Club, and edits its newsletter, got started the usual way, in the late 1960s, as a Novice. He moved on to CW traffic nets and then the DX bug bit. He has a DXCC Mixed Honor Roll plaque on the wall now (time to send in some more cards, Bruce). In 1979 he and the family sailed the Yankee Trader on a 10-month voyage to 55 ports of call and a number of brief DX operations. Bruce's favorites were Pitcairn Island (VR6BJ) and Desecheo (KP5/K0BJ). From home, Bruce is a very active ham, working the Russian "RS" satellites, swapping packets with SAREX shuttle missions, operating the "new" HF bands (which are getting less new by the day!) and, of course, chasing DX everywhere. 12-year-old son Jon just passed his Technician class exam. - - K1TN.