[Milsurplus] [GreenKeys] lack of civility

[Jim Haynes]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2011, Todd, KA1KAQ wrote:

> Personally I have little use for these so-called nets, as they seem to
> serve no real purpose beyond reserving a frequency for group XYZ to
> have a roundtable rag chew on. And yes, unless there is a declared

I've always been a greenkeyer, and almost never operated voice in my
whole ham career of 50+ years.  (nor CW either).  Just lately I have
realized I have no idea how to operate voice, if I just wanted to call
CQ and have a ragchew with somebody.  There's a daily voice net on 80M
that I check into for no good reason other than to let the world know I'm
still alive.  They announce "Don't operate on this frequency before
5 p.m. because we have a carefully worked-out agreement with some other
net not to interfere with them before that hour."  Then there is a half
hour to hour-and-a-half of "pre-net" when the guys just yak back and 
forth.  I never participate in that, don't have anything to say to them
and don't care to listen to what they have to say.  Then the net starts
at a time depending on band condx and everybody checks in and the net
is then over.  The NCS always thanks the pre-net operators for "helping
to hold the frequency".  And maybe some chat goes on after the net, but
I turn off at that time.

Then there's another voice net, or more of a ragchew roundtable, that
I check into very rarely because I can't hear all the stations and
I don't have anything to say to them anyway, unless I'm testing some
piece of equipment.  It seems to have a variable start time because
some other net has the frequency at an earlier hour and gives it up at
a variable time.  I know there has been some conflict between the two
nets.

So it seems to me almost as if every frequency there is is claimed by
some net or other at most of the usable hours of the day, and if a guy
just wants to make a random contact using voice he has no place to go.