ARC has undergone a lot of changes and growth and contraction in the 20 years or so that I've been associated with it.  When NO7V and I joined in the summer of 1982, there wasn't much happening.  We had a repeater (recently migrated to 146.84 MHz from its original frequence of 146.73) and little else.   There was no newsletter and there was no club net.  There was some sentiment afloat to toss the idea of a club and make it merely another repeater group, like PRI.  It seemed at the time that the average equivalent age in human years of the membership was about eighty.  PARC was not at that time an ARRL Affliliated Club.

Steve and I jumped into that mix with both feet, with the collaboration of the then President, Bob Sauter, KA7AHF.  Bob was hardly content with that particular status quo, and he was looking for  some people to push stuff ahead.  Push, we did.  First out of the barrel was a complete rewrite of the By-Laws.  It bore the collective stamp of all 3 of us, although I probably did more of the devising of them than either of them (not just to toot my own horn on that, mind you).  The second thing to start up was the sPARC gap.  Close on its heels came PARCNET.  I had been a member of the Anchorage Amateur Radio Club when I lived up there, and there were a lot of things that impressed me about that organization that we attempted to adopt here.  We also re-affiliated as quickly as we could, qualifying for it by the summer of 1983.

We didn't always get it right.  The year I was President (1985-1986), the membership rolls dropped below 50.  Some of that was attrition of a lot of the older members who had become the silent majority, but some of our do-ers decided to take a hike.  I'll be the first to admit that the frequently strident tone of my editorials and opinion pieces in the sPARC gap probably did more to alienate them than most things.  It took a long time for it to sink in with me that in any volunteer-based organization, 10% of the members do 99% of the work.  It was my efforts to try and expand on that that got things sideways.

Bob Sauter had some other good ideas that we went about trying to implement.  For a while during the 80s, PARC was an active participant in an umbrella organization of local clubs called the Northwest Amateur Radio Council.  The Council's accomplishments included the first ongoing VE session programs in the local area (save for the Adventists, who held their sessions on Sundays for religious reasons).  Later on, the Council also put together the 1988 ARRL National Convention, out at the Red Lion in Jantzen Beach.  Some of the things that made it successful also contributed to its demise.  There was a bit of a power struggle between the Convention committee and the ARRL Northwestern Division Director of the time that almost derailed the convention completely; but also eventually tore a big hole in the structure of the Council, which was quietly disbanded following the convention.

We had some fun times with PARC in those early years:  Field Day was revived in 1983, at the farm of one of our members, Sherrill Smith, KA7KNG.  Sherrill woke me up in the middle of the night, as I was pounding brass on 40 meters, by discharging his .357 about 3 feet away from me.  Kelly Butte became our FD site the following year and it has been thus ever since.  Hobo jungles and poison oak are somewhat easier to deal with.
We also had the SCCA Pro Rallies, out in the various tree farms.  They not only provided us with good emergency preparedness drilling, but they also got us mixed up with operators from other groups as well.  It was interesting to compare notes, as I did once when I was running the show with people who were doing this up in Western Washington.  One difference, we had repeaters that worked for us.  They didn't have them in the areas where they rallied.

PARC has grown a lot over the years since my initial involvement.  It has also contracted, a time or two.  It's a much healthier organization now than it was then.

The ARRL, on the other hand, has also undergone some changes; not all of which are cosmetic.  For the first time since it was first published in 1915, QST will no longer chronicle the activities of League members, starting with the January issue.  I have rather negative thoughts about that, that are not necessarily shared by others.  To me, it seems like the League's Board has turned their backs on the people who put them where they are.  I just hope that they don't end up diminishing the League in the process.  The website is all well and good, but some of us have to see hard copy to be able to do anything constructive.

Finally, a personal note:  In the almost year and a half since I started playing with digital modes, I have managed to work and get cards from all 50 states (but not all digital) and 6 continents (all digital, but not all PSK-31).  For the exclusive 2-meter FM users among you, that's probably not very significant, but there's a lot more to ham radio than talking through repeaters (or working DX, for that matter).  This is the last issue of Volume 20.  It's up to you to shape the contents of the next 20 years.