IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE ANNE ARUNDEL RADIO CLUB
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The Anne Arundel Radio Club (AARC) meets on the first and third Thursday’s of each month except in December when the first Thursday meeting is designated as the Annual Meeting, and the third Thursday meeting is replaced by a Holiday Party on a different night and time. We also tend to skip meetings when they fall on holidays.
The first meeting in any month is typically designated the Business Meeting where all reports are heard, prior to a short presentation on some topic of interest. The second meeting is typically called the Presentation Meeting, where business is held to a minimum to make room for longer presentations. Though most presentations have to do with Amateur Radio, we have had some very good ones that weren’t. See the web site for details.
The second Thursday of each month, except December, we hold a Board of Directors meeting.  The Board is comprised of seven individuals, who serve for one year terms. Directors are elected at the Annual Meeting in December. Within the seven are the four named officers, the President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. The remaining three are deemed to be Directors at Large. By common practice Presidents tend to serve no more than two consecutive terms.
The fourth Thursday of each month is reserved for Antenna and Rules Committee meetings (separately). This generally skips both November, for Thanksgiving, and December, to allow for holiday shopping.
Meetings typically run from 7:30 pm till around 9:00pm, and are open to the public with few exceptions. Though everyone can attend, members are the only ones allowed to vote. There is no age limit for membership or voting, and you don’t have to be a licensed ham to be a member. You do have to have an interest in the hobby, pay any dues due, and be accepted into membership by a majority vote of the Board of Directors (Quorum 4), and a majority vote of the membership present (Quorum 20).
Speaking of dues, the dues year runs from January 1st through December 31st of any calendar year, with one exception. Dues paid, or free memberships granted, between November 1st, and December 31st shall cover the following year, plus any remaining portion of the current year. Therefore dues paid, or free memberships granted between January 1st and October 31st shall only apply to the remainder of the calendar year.
The dues, by the way, are set by the Board of Directors. Currently yearly dues are $45 for a Family Membership, $30 for a Regular Membership, and $15 for a Student Membership. As noted above the Board has also created Free Memberships. To qualify you must never have been a member of the AARC, and must apply within 90 days of completing one of the following: 1) Passing your FCC license exam after having taken an AARC license course designed for that level of license, or 2) Have either received your first ham radio license, or your most recent license upgrade by passing your license exam at the AARC Clubhouse facility at 3789 Queen Anne Bridge Road, Davidsonville, MD 21035.
Note that the 90 day time limit can be a big help to someone passing their exam in August or September. If those individuals wait till November 1 to apply, they can greatly extend the length of their free memberships.
Be aware non-payment of dues moves you from active status to inactive status. It does not terminate you. You will lose your right to vote, but you will remain as an inactive member. If you wish to reactivate your inactive membership at any time, you simply have to pay dues for the current period and you are instantly reinstated to full active status.
One of the advantages of active status is membership level access to the website. This means when you log on, you can access a number of web pages not available to non-members, or inactive-members. One of those pages is the renewal form which you need to return you to active status. You can, however always reach it from this page.
The AARC also has a training program. Classes for the entry level Technician Class License are taught both spring and fall. A course for the General Class License is also taught in spring, between the end of the Technician Class and the June testing date. The idea here is to have the new Generals ready for Field Day in late June. We will hold our own Extra Class course, and we can point you to what is likely the best you can find anywhere, taught in January by Rol Anders (K3RA) who chairs the FCC committee that selects the actual test questions.
You should also know we have an AARC Official Calendar which is on the Club menu. It lists things like Public Service Events for which we almost constantly need volunteers, the Kit Building Workshop typically the last Sunday of the month at 1:00 pm. You’ll also find references there to events like Field Day (June), Winter Field Day (January) and the Maryland DC QSO Party (August) which the club participates in yearly, and a number of area Hamfests and other technical flea markets plus emergency preparedness events.
Finally you should note that on this web site, in the footer, is an item called “Contact Us“. From that page you can type a note to any of the four named club officers, or to all the Board Members at once, or most of the Committee chairs and Team leaders, you have email access to those who are in leadership positions.