Accomplishments

In February 2010 KC9QXO and I established the Illinois Radio League with the ambition of giving back to the Amateur community by getting more people involved. With this in mind Bill3 and I decided the primary objective was to educate and lobby for the hobby.

Strategic Marketing

With the help of Tom Bryan (KC9JZF) Bill3 and I sponsored a local community night, we invited the local municipal and emergency management teams, the local press, and advertised the event in community news venues. The event accomplished two objectives the first educated and supported a relationship with the local community emergency management services. Additionally, we were able to quantify the practicality of giving a Technician class. We had twelve students sign up that night!

In March of 2010 all twelve of our students passed their exam and one even passed his General exam. We had accomplished the fist phase of our objective. Now we needed to lobby.

So, how does one start the sport of lobbing without any previous experience. Fate had it, the ARRL who we just joined and received membership just a month before sent me a note asking us to contact our state Representative and Senate members in regards to house bill HB5761, the new anti texting law proposed. The new law in the current draft included all communication for non emergency users. This made mobile Amateur operators in direct violation of state law. We immediately contacted the ARRL and drafted a letter to our local law makers and later met with our State Representative in this regard. Our State Rep was convinced our changes were valid. We later found out the Illinois House voted unanimously the changes were acceptable. We asked that any control operator holding a valid FCC license was excluded from this bill.