Hello everyone in the Eastern Pennsylvania Section! If you have seen the ARRL Letter sent out on Thursday, you will have seen the announcement of both my election to the new term as EPA Section Manager (starting October 1, 2026 through June 30, 2028), as well as my appointment to fill out the term between now and then, effective June 8, 2028.
I wanted to sent out a short email introducing myself and my initial plan as your new SM. So I am Matt / KV3JGB. I am a recently licensee (Technician – 2023 / General – 2024), and a member of ARRL since I first got my license. I’m active on my local repeaters on VHF/UHF, and I’m active on SSB HF (CW is still a working in progress), mostly on 40m though I have a fondness for 15m. My current focus is working satellites on FM – it’s amazing to me I can contact the ISS repeater from my back yard with a portable radio and antenna! You can find the rest of my story on my QRZ.com page – it’s pretty up to date.
My initial plan as your new SM is pretty simple – learn the position! Thankfully all the ARRL folks are friendly and helpful, including our new Division Director (Marty Newingham / AG3I). I’m going to start to reach out to all the appointees in our section who do the majority of the work, to learn about them, and understand what they do and what they need. I also want to fill vacancies to ensure we have people to provide the services available.
I’d also love to hear from you! What do you love about what ARRL provides, and what would you like to see us do more of? Any feedback is appreciated. As your Section Manager, I want to ensure the services ARRL provides are top notch in our section, and our members are engaged with ARRL. I also want to generally spread Amateur Radio as much as possible, to continue to protect and grow our hobby.
Speaking of great things in our hobby, ARRL Field Day is coming up in just two weekends. I hope many of you are able to participate, even a little bit. It’s a fun time to meet other people in our hobby. In fact, if you are in Chester County, come out and meet me at my local repeater groups Field Day site in Chester Springs! We are the 146.985 Repeater Group with the FD callsign of W3R. Next year I hope to visit some other Field Day sites, but this year I made the commitment to fully help as I did not expect to take this position so quickly.
See you all on the air or in person!
73, Matt Butch / KV3JGB
Eastern Pennsylvania Section Manager