Welcome to Handiham World!
I have heard from net manager Howard, KE7KNN, and the move of the Handiham Monday night EchoLink net is official -- we will be making the change beginning the first week in March.
Frankly, I'm a bit relieved. Monday nights were just not good for me, because my own local radio club has a 2 m net at the same time. I had tried flipping back and forth between the two nets, checking into one and then checking into the other. This never seemed like a good way to operate. I always felt that I was never really giving either net my full attention.
But that's just me.
Monday night is apparently a fairly busy night for others as well. Since Monday is the start of the traditional work and school week, it may very well be that family matters simply have to take priority over amateur radio. We think we will have better luck with Wednesday night net activities. By Wednesday, most people have gotten their week pretty well planned out. It may be easier to take a few minutes out of a Wednesday evening, so we hope to hear more of you checking in. Since the 7:00 PM start time might have caused a conflict with the CNIB net, which starts at 6:30 PM USA Central Time and sometimes lasts longer than 30 minutes, we are also moving our start time by a half hour to 7:30 PM Minnesota time. That means the Universal Time start would be Thursday mornings at 01:30 GMT.
The other details about the net remain the same:
- The Handiham EchoLink net is still the same friendly gathering open to everyone.
- It is still a great place to learn about getting on the air and how to participate in nets.
- There is a net control station to keep things organized, but unlike many other nets, we invite new net controls to step up to the plate and take over!
- There is a Net Manager, Howard, KE7KNN, who will be glad to hear that you want to participate, either as a station checking in, or as a net control station.
- The net is still on the same repeaters and nodes as the ones we use for the daily EchoLink net.
- In the Twin Cities you can use the N0BVE repeater system, 145.450 MHz, negative offset, no tone.
- You can connect via nodes 89680 or 267582 on EchoLink.
- IRLP node 9008 (Vancouver BC reflector)
- Yaesu WIRES system number 1427
- And there are other ways as well, so feel free to connect as you see fit. The one exception is that we ask you not to connect to N0BVE via IRLP, since that dumps off all the EchoLink users.
The first Wednesday of each month the net has a theme of "learning", so don't miss the opportunity to be a better net participant or control station. If you are shy, just listen in. We'd love to hear you check in though!
Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
