W2LJ was a No Show

Unfortunately, the QRP ARCI Contest Manager found no time to participate in the QRP ARCI Fall QSO Party on Saturday!

I got a late start on Saturday morning, and was almost late for my own VE Session More on that in a bit. I ran out of the house without taking my morning heart meds and as a result, felt kind of crappy for the rest of the day, until I took them a few hours later than I usually do.  After grocery shopping, I was kind of too "pooped to pop", so I didn't get on the air. Lesson learned - take those @#^%$ pills before leaving the house in the morning!

Getting back to the VE Session - we had one candidate.  This has been a pitiful year for our VE Sessions. Candidates are becoming scarcer than hens teeth. We had one in May, only two at the Hamfest in June, and none in July, August or September! The only thing I can attribute this to is the genesis and popularity of online exams. Candidates don't have to travel and can take the exam from the comfort of their own home.

I told the Team that I was going to schedule monthly exams for 2026 for the first half of the year only. If the number of candidates does not pick up, we will cease monthly sessions and go to a quarterly schedule. One of our Team members suggested that we offer online exams and I told him that if the Team wanted that, then one of them would have to take over as Liaison. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in taking on that responsibility. In my mind, there's way too many opportunities for irregularities and I'm not putting my license on the line for that.

Maybe that was a bit harsh, but it is what it is.

Being a VE Liaison is a lot more work than just showing up to a session, grading exams and signing paperwork. The pre-session coordinating of candidates, making sure enough VEs show up, and preparing examination materials, in addition to post session paperwork eats up a lot of personal time. From what I understand, the on line sessions require even more work for the Liaison. 

Quite frankly, I've done this for a lot of years and it's getting to be that I'd rather spend the time sitting behind my own radio and getting on the air.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Interesting speculation

This appeared on Facebook regarding the IT situation over at the ARRL:

This was reported by Chris NW6V 

 Mike Ritz, W7VO, ARRL 2nd Vice President, was at the WVDXC club meeting last night, having just attended an ARRL board meeting to discuss the outage. Mike reported those meetings are a weekly event until the matter is resolved.

Everything that was running on INTERNAL servers is down until further notice. That includes their VoIP phone system, their .org email addresses, and front ends for things like LOTW. Everything running on external servers - cloud servers etc. - including LOTW data, is believed unaffected. But, such data will not be available until the internal matters are resolved. Thus, "joe@arrl.org" doesn't work - because that was on their internal mail server. But "joe@arrl.net" does - because the relays didn't run internally. I checked, and NW6V@ARRL.NETworks.

Efforts to restore the internal systems is proceeding full-time. No time-line can be given. The nature of the problem cannot be discussed.

I believe Mike said - with air asterisks around his words - "We have been advised to say nothing." He responded similarly when asked if "the Feds" were investigating this.

Being that the ARRL is connected to Homeland Security through its disaster response functions, and that personal data (no credit cards) for many relatively important persons are stored in the systems (business, military, science, etc.) such an investigation could very well involve the FBI and Homeland Security.

I (Chris NW6V)  was an IT Director in mental healthcare for many years, so security was a big part of my responsibility. As a professional looking at it from the outside, this has all the earmarks of a hack - of sufficient severity that it needed to be reported as a CRIME. At which point, IT is required to lock everything down - every computer and device involved becomes EVIDENCE - until a full investigation by forensics experts - da cops - is conducted. Getting everything back up is NOT job 1. Once the "crime scene" is clear (yellow tape down), THEN the job of recovery can begin. If some kind of hack had wormed into the ARRL system, recovery of local system by restoring backups becomes problematic - it may be difficult to verify that backups contain no trace of the hack. In which case, recovery and restoration of services would be slow and very painful.

This fits what we know about the situation to a "T."

73 Chris NW6V

Interesting. If the ARRL was hacked by someone with some kind of revenge motive in mind, they may have bitten off way more than they could chew. I never thought of the possibility of Federal Government involvement in this due to ties and MOEs with Homeland Security.  If this was a hack, and it is determined to be a crime, the perpetrators could be facing some very serious Federal prison time if caught and prosecuted.

I hope this gets cleared up soon. The LOTW situation doesn't bother me so much, but any disruption to the VE process does. My Team's next session is a week from this coming Saturday - June 8th. I'd hate to have to tell my candidates that I have no idea as to when their results will be processed. And no sooner did I write this, than I discovered this bit of good news:

ARRL VEC Services Update During Systems Disruption

05/29/2024

ARRL previously reported that we are responding to a serious incident involving access to our network and headquarters-based systems. Several services have been affected, including those administered by the ARRL Volunteer Examiner Coordinator (ARRL VEC).

Exam Registrations and Materials. ARRL Volunteer Examiners (VEs) should continue to submit exam registrations and material requests. While we are unable to post new or revised exam session dates and details to the website, we can ship out exam materials. Please remember that most exam materials are available on our website (www.arrl.org/resources-for-ves).

Processing Applications to the FCC. We have resumed the processing of Amateur Radio License applications with the FCC. This includes applications for new and upgrade licenses, individual applications, and club license applications. Exam sessions will be submitted to the FCC in chronological order, from earliest test dates to the latest. Please allow additional time for our processing as the exam session backlog is cleared.

International Radio Permit and License Class Certificates. We are currently unable to create International Amateur Radio Permits, License Class Certificates, and Volunteer Examiner (VE) badges, certificates, and stickers. New ARRL VE applications and renewals are unable to be processed at this time.

ARRL Youth Licensing Grant Program | FCC Application Fee Reimbursement Information. ARRL is continuing to accept reimbursement forms to cover the one-time $35 application fee for new license candidates younger than 18-years of age for tests administered under the auspices of the ARRL VEC. Reimbursement checks may take longer than normal to be processed at this time.

ARRL VEC cannot be reached by telephone at this time. We appreciate your patience as ARRL continues to work on restoring access to affected systems and services.

This story will be updated with new developments.

Thank you ARRL VEC Department for the update!

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

VE Exam Sessions

On February 10th, we held our monthly VE Exam session, which occurs on the second Saturday of the month. We had six candidates, and if I remember correctly, we brought in two new Technicians, and we had two upgrades to General and two upgrades to Extra.

I think it was the Tuesday following the session, I received a phone call from one of the candidates. 

Without even getting a name, or the caller telling me who he was, I hear "How come you haven't sent the license test session results in?"

I was like "Wait. What?"

"I called the FCC and they told me they haven't received the results of Saturday's session."

I assured the candidate that I had indeed submitted the results to the ARRL the following morning, and that I would try to find out what was going on. The great thing about the ARRL-VEC is that they are very prompt in providing information and answers when you ask them something. It turned out the FCC's results submission servers were down and they were not accepting exam session results. The VEC Department assured me that they had received my session report and had uploaded it to the receiving queue at the FCC, but they had no idea when the results would be processed. 

Why didn't the FCC elaborate on that little fact to my candidate? I guess they didn't want to look like the "bad guy". "We didn't receive anything" kind of places the blame elsewhere rather than "Our servers are down, we are not capable of processing sessions right now."

This is the second time in a few months that this has happened and I'm not surprised. If you were to tell me the FCC is still running Windows XP, that would not surprise me, either. Heck, if you were to tell me the FCC was running Windows 95 that would not surprise me, either.

The thing is, exam candidates should not be so eager to blame the VE Team for occurrences like this. The accusatory tone from my candidate was disheartening, to say the least. As a VE Liaison, let me tell you what goes into these VE Sessions.

First off, you have to let the VEC that you are associated with, know your exam schedule so that it can be publicly posted.  I have to do this towards the end of each year - letting the ARRL know when the ETS of NJ Exam Team will be in session. It's done online and is not difficult, but it is still an extra chore that needs to be done.

Then, as Liaison, my contact information is given out so candidates can let me know they want to come to a session. I respond with an e-mail, letting each person know where the exams are being held (in detail, so they don't get lost) as well as letting them know that they need an FRN Number if they don't already have one, and how to get it. In addition they're informed about filling out an FCC 605 form and everything they should be bringing with them to the exam. I also request a phone number from each so that I can text or call if for some reason the exam session gets cancelled at the very last moment. That happened a few times during the pandemic and is not a problem now, but it's still good to have that information.

Anther e-mail has to go out to the VE Team letting them know whether the exam session for the month is "on" and letting them know how many candidates we'll be expecting. And then you hope and pray that at least two examiners will show up as three is the minimum needed to conduct an exam session. 99% of the time, this is not a problem, but there have been instances where only the bare minimum have showed up. Sometimes it's like herding cats.

Then exam day comes and all the paperwork has to be checked, ID's and FRNs checked, fees collected, tests given and graded and all the associated paperwork that goes with all of that. The candidates have to be be watched to make sure no funny business is taking place AND the VE's themselves have to be watched. Human tendency is for them to start chatting amongst themselves, and they have to be reminded to keep the atmosphere silent so that the candidates can concentrate on their task. Newer VE's have to be guided on procedures so that no candidates are penalized because of newbie VE mistakes. That, in and of itself, explains the need for a minimum of three Volunteer Examiners.

The next morning (Sunday morning) I gather it all together into one big stack, scan it and upload it to the ARRL. I send them the hardcopies of the Exam Session Report, the Candidate Roster and a check to cover the exam fees. If folks pay in cash, I write a check to cover that amount and send it in. I can do the payment part online if I use a credit card, but I prefer not to run up a credit card if I can help it.

So there's a lot more to these exam sessions than just sitting down and handing out and taking tests. Your VE Team is doing all this volunteer work because they want to give back something to the hobby that they have loved for so long. They're giving up their time and talent to benefit YOU. If things don't go as smoothly or quickly with the results, try not to jump to the conclusion that it's somehow the Team's fault or that they didn't so something correctly.

And now I'm going to go into curmudgeon (Old Fart) mode. Back in the day, we had to wait six to eight weeks for our licenses to come through the mail. You guys get your results so much faster now, it's almost enough to make one's head swim. I know that no one like to hear that, but that doesn't make it any less true. Oh, and by they way, the results of our February 10th exam session finally got processed by the FCC yesterday - a whole 10 days late.  

I let the inquiring candidate know - he was happy.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

This is not good!

With a VE Session scheduled at the W2QW Hamfest this weekend, to boot! We all know the speeds in which the government acts - Slow, Stop and Reverse!

 From the ARRL:

FCC Universal Licensing System Applications Are Unavailable

06/13/2023

The FCC Universal Licensing System (ULS), which includes Electronic Batch Filing (EBF) used by VECs for new and upgrade license submissions and club license applications, Application Search, License Search, License Manager system used for filing applications directly with the FCC, Tower Construction Notification System, E-106 System, Antenna Structure Registration Online Filing and searches, TOWAIR and all ULS Specialized Searches, are currently down.

The FCC’s EBF and License Manager Filing systems have stopped accepting and processing all amateur radio exam session files and applications. The EBF system has not processed any VEC license applications and examination session files since Monday afternoon. The other systems have not been available since Friday June 9 at the close of business.

ARRL VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM, said her office contacted the FCC staff, which said systems are down due to maintenance but did not estimate how long the systems would be down. “As soon as the FCC staff corrects the EBF system problem, we will immediately file the backlog via the automated system, which would take only a few hours or less to release,” Somma estimated. When the License Manager system is again available, amateurs will be able to file license renewals, vanity call sign applications, and other license updates online directly with the FCC.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!