It is almost Thanksgiving although it hardly seems like it as it has been 70 degrees the past few days. Good weather for last minute preparations for New England winter.
As many of you know, the New England ARES Academy was conducted during the month of October as part of our virtual HamXposition. Yours truly, along with K1UAF SM of NH and participant on MARIPN conducted the session on message handling. All the programs were recorded and are available on YouTube under New England ARES Academy. There were 400 to 500 registered participants from all over, and thanks to our own K9HI, the organizer has agreed to send out radiograms to all those who were registered. Guess what? I can’t handle that many, so we will all be busy in one way or another. I will have more details in a separate mailing.
Something came up today that perhaps needs some explanation. I received a radiogram with an email address in the text. We don’t often see this but it is possible so we should know the proper way to handle it. We are familiar with sending email addresses in the address portion of the radiogram but it is important to remember how to count the word groups in the text. For example if I send a radiogram requesting a reply to kw1u@comcast.net, it could be counted as one word group for the check. However if that radiogram were to end up on CW at some point it would need to be sent as five word groups, thus changing the check in the preamble. Therefore we write it as we do in the address portion as ‘kw1u atsign comcast dot net’ which makes 5 word groups instead of one.
After consulting with several traffic handlers in the section there seemed to be a positive interest in an email group for Massachusetts traffic handlers. I have now set up a group on groups.io called MA-NTS, for the purpose of sharing information, asking questions and having discussions about topics of interest in regard to the National Traffic System, message handling and net operation. All MA message traffic handlers and anyone interested in learning more about it are invited to join us. Go to groups.io search for MA-NTS.
The nets are doing fantastically well with new check-ins, and with Peter KC1HHO’s training program a number of these are now handling message traffic. If any are interested in training and can make the Boston 145.23 repeater at 8 PM nightly, check in with Peter, or if not contact KW1U@arrl.net for more information.
The October net and traffic report is found below. 73 and Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Marcia KW1U STM EMA and WMA
| MASSACHUSETTS STM REPORTS 2020 | Oct-20 | |||||||
| NET | SESSIONS | QTC | QNI | QTR | NM | FREQ | Net Time | |
| WMTN C1 | 25 | 3 | 242 | 197 | N1YCW | 146.91 | 1300 Daily | |
| WMTN C2 | 25 | 5 | 160 | 193 | KD2JKV | 146.91 | 1700 Daily | |
| MARI | 31 | 177 | 164 | 633 | KW1U | 3565 KHz | 1900 Daily | |
| EM2MN | 31 | 237 | 373 | 1222 | KC1HHO | 145.23 | 2000 Daily | |
| CM2MN | 17 | 3 | 81 | 112 | KK1X | 146.97 | 2100 Daily | |
| HHTN | 17 | 35 | 211 | 309 | W1HAI | MMRA Rptrs | 2200 Su,M,W,F | |
| CITN | 19 | 8 | 89 | 226 | AC7RB | 147.375 | 1930 Tu,Th,F, Sa | |
| MARIPN | 14 | 70 | 114 | 310 | N1LAH | 3978 KHz | 1700 Tu,Th,Sa | |
| WARPSN | 4 | 8 | 91 | na | N1IQI | 147.225 | 0830 Su | |
| WMEN/HF | 3 | 0 | 91 | 61 | N1CPE | 3944 KHz | 0830 Su | |
| WMEN/VHF | 4 | 0 | 63 | 52 | N1PUA | 146.91 | 0900 Su | |
| 190 | 546 | 1679 | 3263 | |||||
| Note: HHTN accessible also via Plymouth and Mt Greylock rptrs and Echolink New-Eng2 Conf and IRLP 9127 | ||||||||
| SAR | ORG | REC | SENT | DEL | TOTAL | BPL | BPL = 500+ points | |
| KW1U | 0 | 422 | 391 | 2 | 815 | X | ||
| N1IQI | 0 | 69 | 397 | 4 | 470 | |||
| N1TF | 0 | 43 | 58 | 7 | 108 | |||
| W1RVY | 0 | 87 | 32 | 2 | 121 | |||
| KC1KVY | 7 | 52 | 94 | 22 | 175 | |||
| N1LAH | 1 | 46 | 40 | 4 | 91 | |||
| WA1LPM | 1 | 48 | 32 | 2 | 83 | |||
| KC1HHO | 0 | 50 | 18 | 10 | 78 | |||
| KE1ML | 2 | 29 | 32 | 12 | 75 | |||
| WA1VAB | 0 | 13 | 8 | 2 | 23 | |||
| NV1N | 0 | 15 | 42 | 1 | 58 | |||
| W1JWM | 0 | 40 | 35 | 0 | 75 | |||
| W1PLK | 0 | 13 | 11 | 10 | 34 | |||
| W1TCD | 0 | 9 | 15 | 4 | 28 | |||
| AB1ZS | 0 | 10 | 15 | 0 | 25 | |||
| KC1MSN | 0 | 13 | 18 | 12 | 43 | |||
| KC1NBI | 1 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 12 | |||
| PSHR (Min 70 Points) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | TOTAL | |
| KW1U | 40 | 40 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 130 | |
| N1TF | 40 | 40 | 30 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 115 | |
| N1IQI | 40 | 40 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 10 | 110 | |
| W1RVY | 40 | 40 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 110 | |
| N1LAH | 40 | 40 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 | |
| KE1ML | 35 | 40 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 95 | |
| KC1HHO | 32 | 40 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 92 | |
| KC1KVY | 40 | 40 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 90 | |
| WA1LPM | 40 | 40 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 90 | |
| NV1N | 24 | 40 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 74 | |
| KC1MSN | 40 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 80 | |
| DRS | RCV | FWD | TOTAL | |||||
| KW1U | 1124 | 974 | 2098 | |||||
| N1IQI | 69 | 397 | 466 | |||||
| W1JWM | 14 | 23 | 37 | |||||
| AB1ZS | 5 | 11 | 16 | |||||
| W1RVY | 2 | 9 | 11 | |||||