What I Did On My Veteran's Day

Spent most of the day on the air. We were doing net operations and traffic handling training; operating as part of a Directed Net can be difficult to get used to, when most Hams spend their time either making QSLs or rag chewing.

A Directed Net can be described as "Speak only when spoken to"; that is, the net exists for a purpose, and each station answers in order, and send it's traffic when told to do so; the exception, of course, is when one station has emergency traffic. In twenty years in the Army, I only operated as part of one Directed Net, which was the second Infantry Division's Garrison Command Net. So it can be hard to get used to it.

The traffic that is passed as part of the training is usually either local weather reports, or made up emergency traffic. (Locally, Mount Rainier has erupted for the benefit of emergency communications training countless times.) Since many if not most of the operators part of our net today were veterans, we changed things up by discussing the history of veterans Day, and then sharing some (clean) War Stories. (Yes, Virginia, there are clean War Stories.)

We also did some training with digital modes, especially MT63, which lets you send a text message without having to have a modem and other highly specialized--and often expensive--equipment for the connecting your computer to your radio. At it's simplest, you can hit "send" and hold the mike next to the computer's speaker. (Pray for low ambient noise...) It is effective even when you can't hear the other guy; he can still get your message.

After the net was closed, we stayed on the air and "dialed around' to see if we could talk to anyone else. We got a bit excited when we heard a lady speaking English with an accent, saying something about being in Sydney; alas, it was Sydney, British Columbia, not Australia. Nice to talk to her and he friends, but not the long-range coup we thought. (Talking Seattle to Vancouver BC is about like talking to Portland, OR. Glad to do so, but Portland Maine looks better in the log, and we'd prefer Portland, New South Wales, or even better, the Isle of Portland, in Dorsetshire; my ancestors may be from that area..)

Then there was station WW1FBW, a special event station in West Virgina, at the retirement home that the Frank W Buckles, the oldest living US veteran of The Great War resides in.

Couldn't get through the pile up.

Heard the USS Essex, in Florida, too, but... couldn't get through the pile up.

Heard someone in Maryland, possibly at Fort McHenry... couldn't get through the pile up.

Heard Army MARS at Fort Huachuca, AZ, talking to Fort Monmouth, NJ, on ham bands using ham calls, but couldn't get a word in.

All in all, a good, day. Looks like all those "I'd like to buy a sunspot, Pat" jokes finally paid off...

Glossary:

• QSL: Making contact. Hams traditionally exchange postcards to confirm said contact. Q signals date from wired telegraph days, are still common in sending CW (Continuous Wave or Morse code), and are often used as verbal shorthand. (Q Signal Humor.)
  
• Rag chew: Jaw jacking. Yakking. Gabbing. We are told that "rag" was at one time slang for "tongue."
• Digital modes: There are many. All require some kind of equipment, the beauty of MT63 is that it only requires a computer with a speaker and a radio.
• Special Event Station: Special call sign issued by the FCC for a special event, usually (but not only) one day. The calls themselves often do not follow normal protocols, and usually indicate the event, in some way. (I.e., WW1FWB=World War 1, Frank W Buckles.)
• Pile up: When everyone wants to talk to a special event station, or a station that is otherwise rare and whose QSL is desirable.