Western Pennsylvania ARES will begin an HF digital training net starting Sunday Feb10

Western Pennsylvania ARES will begin an HF digital training net starting
Sunday Feb 10. This new net will alternate with our existing VHF/UHF net
with the following schedule:

- 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month at 8PM: 147.195 (PL 131.8) and 443.45
(PL 100) repeaters in New Castle and Pittsburgh and the W3YJ-R Echolink
node.

- 2nd and 4th Sunday of the month at 8PM: 3.583 MHz with a waterfall
center frequency of 1500 Hz. Initial mode will be 8/500 Olivia. We may
switch to MT63-500 or MT63-1000 for bulletins depending upon conditions and
length of bulletins. Once we're comfortable with operating an HF net and
master the basics we will start experimenting with the new high-speed modes
and Flamp.

- 5th Sunday of the month (our Blue Moon scenario): haven't decided yet.

I will be monitoring the 147.195/443.45 repeaters and the W3YJ-R
Echolink node during the HF net, so if you have problems or need assistance
you can give me a call. I will publish the HF net procedures sometime
before the first net, but it will not be very different from any other HF
net. I see no reason to reinvent the wheel.

We want our focus to be on Western Pennsylvania and we don't want to be
overwhelmed, so we will not be accepting checkins from out-of-state on our
HF net. We will accept checkins from Eastern PA but we won't go out of our
way to encourage EPA participation.

If you check into the HF net, please prepare in advance a message to
transmit during the net. We want this to be a net where we all practice
sending traffic not just learn how to check in. I find "check in" nets
where the primary activity consists of checking in to be boring and not
very useful as a training exercise.

There will be no net this weekend because of the Super Bowl.

Please join the wpaares-digital Yahoo group if you're interested in
these nets. Also feel free to email me with any questions.

73,
Harry Bloomberg W3YJ
Assistant SEC, Western PA ARES
hbloomb@gmail.com

 

It is very nice to see such a growing digital effort.

 

Since you want to restrict your coverage area to the area of interest, you might want to give your participants a little primer on NVIS operation. Not only does it help reduce QRM, but it actually results in better performance and reliability within your coverage zone.

Eric