The January 8th club meeting brought new energy to the challenges waiting in 2026. The meeting opened with introductions and the question, “What is one radio goal you have for 2026.” Responses varied from license upgrades to new antennas to learning CW. The topics covered in the old and new business were also varied. Among the noteworthy items was the election of club officers for 2026: John KQ1P returns as President, Marion W1GRL begins a term as Vice President, Joan W1DLC returns as Secretary/Treasurer, and Matt KC1VLH joins Stan W1BOY and Greg KC1RID as a Director of the Board. President, Vice President, and Secretary/Treasurer are one year terms. The additional directors are elected for staggered three year terms. The club would like to thank Chuck AC1BS for his many years serving as the club Vice President, and Evie KA1BRA for serving on the Board.
On a different note, Barbara KC1SSY, EAWA member and Hancock County Emergency Coordinator, encouraged members to use some winter downtime to take two important FEMA courses: ICS 100, Introduction to the Incident Command System and ICS 800, Introduction to the National Response Framework. These are the beginning courses for anyone interested in moving forward in Emergency Communications.
There were numerous announcements, including a friendly reminder that yearly dues should be paid soon ($15 per person, $20 per family), at the Weekend Session this coming Sunday Jeff KA1DBE is holding a planning session for our Annual Ham Symposium in April, and new equipment has been installed for the W1TU repeater. There was also discussion of the various awards associated with ARRL’s American250 WAS program, and lastly, Marion W1GRL announced that at least 8 EAWA members participated in the 2025 DX Marathon.
The title of program, presented by Marion W1GRL, was “The EAWA Website is 2 years old! How are we doing?” The presentation began with many statistics, provided by our website host, WordPress. Combining 2024 and 2025, we have had 3,150 visitors, and 13,028 pages viewed. Focusing on 2025, we published 42 blog posts, and averaged 641 views per month. The most views came in June and October, and our most viewed story was Hamming It Up In the Summertime. Most visitors are reaching us through search engines, however a significant number found us through Facebook. We did have visitors from the ARRL’s club page and from QRZ.
Following a review of the stats, Marion shifted to discuss the ARRL Website Competition that is part of the 2026 Year of the Club. The competition requires a club to state the goals for their website and describe how they are meeting those goals. We have two simple yet powerful goals for the website: To strengthen the sense of community within the club, and share our thriving community with others in an accessible and approachable way. One indicator that we are meeting our goals is that in 2025 we had 1,924 visitors to our website, with most viewing our Homepage (with the calendar and most recent blog posts), Regular Events, and Club Information and History. A second indicator, using data provided by Joan, the EAWA Secretary. Our membership had been declining, reaching 36 in 2023, and since the launch of our website in January of 2024, our membership grew to 43 in 2024 and 54 in 2025. At the time of this writing our website entry has been submitted. Winners will be announced in May. Whether we win something the ARRL competition or not, we are achieving bigger and better things by growing the EAWA and sharing our passion for this great hobby with all who visit our website.
Written by Marion W1GRL
W1TU 