Topband: Donation to Association des Radio Amateurs Tunisiens - ARAT

[donovanf at starpower.net]

Many topband operators had at least one QSO with the Scout Amateur 
Radio Club station 3V8SF this season thanks to the efforts of ARAT, 
the Association des Radio Amateurs Tunisiens and their president 
Ash KF5EYY. 




The Tunisian government has imposed a new transmitter conformity 
testing requirement on top of their already very expensive amateur 
radio licensing fees. 


Keeping Tunisia on the air will be expensive, 2000 Euros in licensing 
fees and 1000 Euros in one time transmitter conformity testing fees. 


You can thank the ARAT members for their topband activity this 
season and keep them on the air in the future if you can make 
a donation to ARAT. Its very easy donate via PayPal to their QSL 
Manager LX1NO's Paypal account: lx1no at yahoo.com 


See ARAT President KF5EYY's request and details below. 


tks 


73 
Frank 
W3LPL 




----- Original Message -----

From: "Ashraf Chaabane" <ash.kf5eyy at gmail.com> 
To: donovanf at starpower.net 
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2019 9:52:12 PM 
Subject: Re[2]: [The Weekly DX] 3V-Tunisia, call for support 


Many thanks for your support, Frank, on behalf of ARAT members! 


73 Ash 3V8SF, 3V8SS 





----- Original Message -----



The "Association des Radio Amateurs Tunisiens - ARAT", created back in 2011 after the Jasmin Revolution, has demonstrated a satisfactory level of serving Tunisian radio amateurs and promoting the hobby in Tunisia (See our website: https://www.arat.tn/ or our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/arat.tunisia/ ). The work that has been done so far was mainly funded by ARAT members (average age 22 years old) and other organizations like YASME (YOTA Activity) or IARU-R1/STARS (ARDF Equipment). 

Contrarily to other countries in the region, ARAT is not receiving ANY financial support from the government especially in these hard times of very bad economy. 

ARAT has a cooperation agreement with the Scout Organization which allows access to thousands of young scouts and provide a good terrain for developing our hobby. Right now, the licenses of the Scout clubs haven't been paid for 10 years putting the clubs at serious risk of closure and 3V not being on the air for an unknown period. Amateur Radio is a very small part of Tunisian Scouts activities which is already having financial difficulties. Last year, the Ministry of Telecommunication asked us to pass all our equipment to a conformity test. This won't also be possible without raising funds. 

ARAT is now kindly asking all those who want to support us, to make a donation to fund license payments (A total of 2 kEuro, 9 stations) and the conformity test of our equipment (about 1 kEuro, 100 Euro per TRX, once in life). Any other remaining monies will help financing ARAT activities such as maintaining clubs equipment, antenna experimentation, electronic kits building, lectures in universities, etc. 

ARAT is committed to provide those who donated with a detailed financial report of where the money went including all back-up documents as we always did with YASME. ARAT is also committed to respond to any query in this regards in full transparency. 

Donations should go to the Paypal account of our QSL Manager LX1NO ( lx1no at yahoo.com ) to avoid big tax cuts if sent directly to Tunisia. Those who do not have a Paypal account, may send an email to Norby LX1NO to inquire for his bank account. 

If any further clarification is needed, please email me at ash.kf5eyy at gmail.com 

73 from Tunisia! 

President of ARAT 
Ashraf Chaabane, KF5EYY 
3V8SF, 3V8SS