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Hi Scott. Back in the early 2000's, a working group was formed at the ARRL, with John Champa as chair, to investigate a broadband solution. In 2006, after much political bureaucracy (aka disagreements/fighting with the ARRL brass) they all quit and the WG disbanded. Soon after, two gents in Austin, Glenn and Rick, started playing with WRT's. Dave then came in and customized the firmware, Bob came in and did hardware stuff, and that is the 4 founders of the current project. In 2009, I met Glenn, he told me about what they were doing, and I setup this site on one of my servers to try to consolidate all the info out there. And the snowball started rolling down hill from there, with many other people giving it a shove at times. BTW, the project is NOT officially affiliated (or under any control) with the ARRL or any other group. The core group itself makes all the decisions on what will happen with the project. We are 'affiliated' with the Austin ARC, but mainly because the core members are all AARC members (and I think we are all ARRL members) and well, this is happening right here in Austin. This may upset ARRL brass that I came out and stated this, but the truth is what it is. We learned from history and do not want a repeat.
Now the project is global, with thousands of nodes around the world. When I sit back and think about how far it has come, I am almost astounded at how far that is, and in relatively such a short time. I told the wife sometime last year that I felt the snowball was about to really pick up steam, and this year has just been incredible for the whole project. With the IAEM award and the QST cover, and all the people coming onboard building and deploying nodes and doing other things with it.... So yes, the "core group" is right here in Austin TX, but there are so many others out there contributing, like Rusty up North of Dallas, people in other states and other countries figuring out other things. I think the biggest thing is all the other evangelists out there who find out about it, play with it, and go out spreading the word. I do all the site registration activations personally, so I get to see all the new people coming onboard. I activate at a very minimum 2 to 5 per day now. Last year it was maybe 10 a week. Thats why I quit sending out emails for every one that I activate. I wish I could be more personal with each and every one, but I have real (paying) work to do every day :-) Hope this answers your question. 73 Jim K5KTF
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