Greetings and welcome to the Florida
Repeater Discussion List,
I am Bryan Fields, W9CR.
I’m involved in amateur radio in the Tampa
Bay area, with
membership in four local clubs and chairman of the Technical
Committee for my
local group.
Professionally I am a Network Architect
with a major
telecom company. I’ve
been a licensed
amateur since 1995 (over 2/3 of my life), hold a GROL+Radar and
have a
background in cellular/microwave networks.
Fellow
Amateurs, the FRC is an
organization run amuck. Incompetent directors are managing
it, flouting
the bylaws, violating Florida Law, and ignoring member needs.
I am asking for your
proxy for the upcoming
FRC meeting.
It has
failed in its ability to
coordinate operations of amateur radio repeaters in the
following ways:
- Publication of the FRC database
on a public website
- This database dump in
MySQL
format and the associated webpages show without a doubt the
level of
incompetency in the programming behind the database. This is nothing but
gross negligence on the
part of Director Rodakis and Director Lavender.
- Per the coordination
policy,
locations are to be kept secret, however a Reddit user was
kind enough to post
a Google earth KML showing the coordinated location of every
repeater in the
state.
- All your personal data, phone,
email, home address, repeater site address and Repeater Site
GPS coordinates are published.
- Length of the coordination
process is unacceptable!
- As of this writing
coordination
applications post 1/25/2016 have not been processed. It’s October!
- If the coordinator cannot
process
applications in a reasonable time, he needs to step down.
- Renewals have not been
processed
post 5/7/2016! As
most coordinations
expire on 9/30/2016, this means no members may vote under
the bylaws! This
applies to the board as well.
- Violation of the coordination
policy by the directors
- Willful violation of the
bylaws
by the directors
- Willful violations of FS 617
regarding members request for information
- Acknowledged receipt of
this by
President Kassis
- Publicly stating the policy of
the FRC is “is unable to search for available frequencies”,
when this is the
FCC definition of a frequency coordinator.
- When they do suggest
frequencies
there active repeaters on them, some even coordinated well
under the radius.
- Inventing new coordination
polices on the fly without approval of the board
The FRC
must be reformed if it wishes to keep
its legitimacy. Frequency
coordination
is voluntary in amateur radio, and there is little reason for
amateur radio
operators in Florida to seek coordination from the FRC under
this current administration.
My goal
is to transform this organization
into a healthy helping hand for repeater operators and other
amateur spectrum
users. No one should
be answered with
contempt for months after putting an application in for
coordination only to be
told “fill it out again, we can’t edit it”.
This should not be an organization which exists as a
good-ol’-boy system
breading contempt; rather one which operates in the open, in
accordance with its
bylaws, and accountable to its members.
The FRC
should ask how to say “Yes” rather
than saying “No” in working with their members and other
amateurs.
My plan to get us on the right
track is:
- Remove the current directors for
gross incompetency and exposing the organization to liability:
- Ray Kassis, N4LEM
- Dana Rodakis, K4LK
- (Glenn) Mike Fletcher,
NI4M
- Chuck Lavender, W4CLL
- Demand new elections for
existing
directors in compliance with the bylaws.
- Establish a bylaw committee to
rewrite the bylaws and change the organization structure to
better serve all
amateurs in Florida.
- Establish a development process
for new policies from the membership
- Encourage input from the
membership based on sound technical policies
- De-centralize coordination by
having a web enabled database be accessible to the public
showing all history
of an application through coordination.
- No one person should be
the gatekeeper of the database.
- Make all records of the FRC open
to the public, as any non-profit serving the public interest
must be.
I will
make a motion to accomplish this at
the next meeting at the Melbourne Hamfest meeting. To make this happen, I
am asking for your
proxy, if you’re a member of the FRC.
You will need to print out this form and sign it, then
send a scan or
legible picture of it to me via email or text message. If you
can attend the
meeting, please do so.
It’s $10
to become a member on the FRC
website and it buys the right to have a say in the future of
amateur radio in
Florida.
I fully
expect to be shouted down by the
board, but as members we cannot be ignored.
I wish to resolve this via the membership, but if
ignored I do intend to
comply the board, by any legal means, to follow the bylaws and
FS 617.
I need
your proxy by the Friday, October 7,
2016.
73’s and
see you at Melbourne,
Bryan Fields, W9CR
P.S. Please feel free to
discuss this on list. If you wish to not be a part of this
discussion you can remove yourself using the link at the
bottom. I'm happy to oblige your wishes via direct email as
well if you have any questions.