The Annual Membership Assembly

On Thursday evening, April the 11^th, over 200 hams (I didn’t count them, this is but a rough estimate) assembled at the Lev Auditorium of the Tel-Aviv University, as per the bylaws of our organistaion, the Israel Amateur radio Club.

After a social get-together, everyone was herded into the hall for the proceedings to get underway.Coming from Beer-Sheva in the south I arrived a bit late, so I missed Joe Obstfeld 4X4KJ’s (IARC general secretary and all-round work-horse) address, but enterred as Mr. Galili of the Ministry of Communications was speaking:

He stated the importance of amateur radio in the Ministry’s eyes, and said the Ministry encourages the establishment of amateur radio staions in museums, places where our hobby will gain public exposure.The Morse requirement had been dropped to 5 words per minute for the General-Class licence, and the Ministry views Morse as not having the same importance as in past years and as a somewhat uneccessary obstacle to would-be radio amateurs.As far as the upcoming World Administrative Radio Council (WARC) in 2003, the Ministry is working closely with the IARC for the retention of amateur frequencies and rights, and the possible expansion of the world-wide 7 MHz band.

Mr Natan Gidron, of Motorola Israel, sponsor of the IARC, then took the podium.He said that as a youth, he was attracted to Amateur Radio, but alas because of the Morse requirement he never had gotten a licence at the time, but nonetheless ham radio led him to a career in radio and electronics to which he owed his present position.Recently he passed the codeless Technical Class test and now has his own callsign.He hopes to pass the Morse test before his retirement.

With Motorola’s ongoing assistance to the Israel Amateur Radio Club, the IARC offices will be moving to the new Motorola building in Tel-Aviv.The place will be more spacious and a tower will be installed for antennas and a completete station will be set up on the premesis.

Miki 4X4KK, presenting the report of the Watchdog Committee, praised the treasurer, Paul 4X6UU,for the first time ever in the history of the IARC having the fiscal balance prepared before the the general membership assembly.He gave appreciation for the outgoing IARC council for all its efforts and achievements and expressed his desire to see the same group continue in the next year.Special mention was given to Danny 4X1YM for his bringing back to the foldamateurs who had left the IARC, and as such our membership numbers increased this past year.It is hoped that the IARC will benefit from monies bequeathed to the State to bolster the treasury and support educational activities in fostering amateur radio amongst the youth.

Miki praised Mark Stern 4Z4KX for his many activities which included nurturing and organising the members, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and manging and promoting the contests of the IARC, especially the Holyland Contest which has really put Israel on the world ham map.

Thanks was given to Shlomo Mussali 4X6LM for his twelve continuous years of editting the IARC magazine “HaGAL”, bringing it up to a new standard in professionalism and appearance.Michael Barak 4X4KF is the new editor of HaGAL, having already published one issue (this is his second) and we wish him every success.

Miki also expressed the Watchdog committee’s appreciation of the multifold contributions of Joe Obstfeld 4X6KJ, IARC general secretary, his endless energy and enthusiasm and countless hours of his time volunteered to making sure that all the functions of the IARC work.

In summation Miki stated that his committee had found the activities of all the committees of the IARC performed in full accordance with the constitution.

Speaking for the Membership Committee, Tuvia Greengross 4X4GT praised Kuti 4X6OM for his ongoing tireless service with the incoming QSL bureau, Ziv 4X1UK for his service in the organisation of every event, Yankele 4X1AH for his monthly articles in HaGAL about the Shabbat Net, and Moshe 4Z1PF for his tireless work in conducting amateur radio courses and examinations.

The next part of the program was the awarding of trophies in recognition of services to amateur radio in Israel:

Leopold 4X6PO was honoured for his contribution making the new sightless members feel at home on the repeaters; Amnon 4X1DF for his activities especially the Dxpeditions;Shlomo 4X6LM for his dozen years editting HaGAL; Ron 4X1MK for two decades of ongoing English-language reportage of IARC activities; Israel 4X1OM and Itzik 4X6ZH for their yeoman achievements in the expansion and maintenance of the IARC repeater system, and Miriam 4X6KT for her assistance to the IARC from her office in the Ministry of Communications.

Next tropies and certificates were awarded to the winners of last year’s Holyland DX Contest and Independence Day VHF-UHF Contest.As in the past few years, the trophies have been the donation of the Shapira family in memory of Eyal Shapira 4Z4NL of blessed memory.

Amnon 4X1DF spoke about the creation of the special Amateur Radio Emergency Network for times of national disaster and crisis.He said that during the terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York, for one week all regular modes of communications had collapsed and one hundred amateur radio volunteers maintained the communications over that period.A few score amateurs have already come forward to volunteer their service and more are welcome to apply to give real service in times of national need.Further information is available from Amnon.

Before the intermission came the nominations and election of the IARC committees for the new term.On the new Executive Council are: 4X1YM, 4X6UU, 4X6KJ, 4Z7GAD, 4X6ZI, 4Z5FG, 4X1DF, 4X1AT, 4X4GI, 4Z5KJ and 4Z4KX.He membership committee is composed by 4X1GY, 4Z5IS and 4Z4XC and the new Watchdog Committee barkers are 4X4KK, 4Z4BS and 4X6PZ.

The intermission gave us another chance to make eyeball QSO’s with the friends we hadn’t seen for a long time and enjoy some refreshments.

Afterwards, the podium was made available to the general membership for a free discussion.I must say that this was the least argumentative forum I have seen in my 30 years in the IARC, with only two speakers taking the stand.Danny 4X1YM requested a vote of the members to rescind an executive council decision of a few years back that stated that the executive could hold a social event only if it would not run at a deficit.This had severely limited the executive in planning the last social evening in Netanya, and as result, even though it did not lose a shekel, the number of tables and repast were insufficient for the number of people attending.With one dessenting vote, Danny’s motion was passed, granting the new council the vote of confidence to plan the next social event unhindered.

In summation, it was a very fruitful evening, the IARC is in good hands, and we can expect a good year of activities in Israeli Amateur Radio.Nonetheless, one could not but notice the lack of young people present, as the grey and balding heads doubtlessly predominated.In the long run, if we do not get a big influx of young blood into our ranks, we will be in big trouble.

THE NEW PLASTIC LICENCE

SIDE TWO

Hats off to Joe for a job well done.The photos came from the IARC data base from which the members’ photos have appeared on the membership cards for a couple of years now.This certainly solves the problem of bringing along doccumentation so that you when your handie raises some official eyebrows you can justify yourself.This is another good reason to pay your IARC membership dues, as this perk is not availble to hams who are non-members.

CONTEST, CONTEST

By the time you’re reading this the Independence Day and Holyland DX contests will have come and gone.This is the first year that the Holyland test is being held on Saturday, everybody’s day off.We should be seeing a lot more participation in Israel, and a lot more 4X QSO’s on everybody’s logs abroad.

DX ACHIEVERS

NEW ISRAEL CALLBOOK ON CD ROM

Those attending the IARC Membership Assembly where presented with a CD ROM containing the latest Israeli Callbook.All licensed 4X/4Z radio amateurs, SWL’s and overseas IARC members are listed … just short of 2000 entries.We had no idea we were so numerous.By means of a little program included on the disc the search of names and callsigns is facilitated.In addition there is some useful amateur radio software on the disc and some other data files.Included are a contest calendar, a listing of IARC diplomas, an article on the Silent Keys’ Forest, a complete countries list and azimuth calculator.Also on the disc is a photo album and 4X/4Z QSL-card album by Tuvia 4X4GT. Congratulations to those who worked on this project: Moshe Inger 4Z1PF the editor and Joe Obstfeld 4X6KJ and Itzik Halevy 4X6HJ who compiled the callbook.

THE PARK HOTEL, NETANYA

The annual General Assembly of the IARC is behind us. A new council has been elected and the announced changes of the ‘HaGal International’, suggested about two months ago take effect with this issue.

It means to you, our faithful readers, that you will receive, from now on, bimonthly issues but we have the possibility to add as many pictures as we would like.Yes, that’s what we had been promise by the new editor of the bimonthly, Hebrew language, ‘HaGal’.

Yet we, meaning Ron 4X1MK and I Ahron 4X1AT still do not know if the editor of HaGAL will be sending you the whole magazine with the larger Hebrew section or just these English pages. We are very optimistic about this change.I personally do hope that it will have a separate cover page - let us see the results and of course your valued opinion and constructive suggestions.

For us it is, after 16 years, a new beginning and do hope to be able to cope with the new challenge.We thought that it would be nice for you to see our pictures.Ron Gangis 52 years of age of age. Ron, born in Canada, lives in Kibbutz Urim located about 25 kilometres west of the city of Beer Sheba.

He is an artist (painter) and electrician by profession with amateur radio being one of his hobbies.If you are on the Internet you can see pictures of his paintings on the site of IARC:www.iarc.org/~4x1mk/ .Ron has been painting for over 20 years, is married to Esti and their son’s name is Oz. Ron’s interests also include Eastern philosophy and music

For my part, I am 75 years old, was born in Berlin Germany and came, a boy of 12, to Israel (than Palestine under the British Mandate) in March 1939 – a shortly before the beginning of the second world war.

For many years I had a transformer factory in Tel Aviv, but I am now an old-age pensioner after working until the age of 70.I became a radio amateur back in 1948.I have been married to Shoshanah 4X6OL for the last 48 years.We have three children and 9 grandchildren.Two of my children are licensed hams too.For the last 17 years I have been teaching the Morse code, and still have classes running, though the attendance is rather poor and we are only teaching 5 words-per-minute as required by the authorities for the General class license nowadays.

73 de Ahron (left in photo) and Ron (right)