Gotcha. Yes I remember about armed forces day. I always seem to be out of touch when these events are occurring. I don’t think I saw any mention of it in advance on the lists. Next year!
From: Ray Fantini <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2022 11:22 AM
To: W2HX <[email protected]>; Rob Flory <[email protected]>; mrca <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Subject: Working Military direct, Armed Forces Cross Band
WAR is the call sign for the radio station located in the Pentagon, AIR is Andrews AFB, NPAX Navy, Annapolis or maybe Patuxent River because they may have been NNS. Camp Evans up in NJ is AAV so you got one in your neighborhood.
Most of the operation is cross band where you listen to the military station on a band outside of the Ham band and they tell you what frequency they are monitoring in the Ham bands but the sixty meter operation is on the same frequency
being both government and Ham share those channels.
The Armed Forces Day Cross band test is a annual event by the DoD and MARS every May, also its fun to have some three letter calls in the log book.
This is outdated but they don’t release the information until after the first of the year for the current opps but you can get an idea of the participating stations and there location from this web site:
Quick look at it and did not see any USMC stations participating, maybe we can get Rob to get his son to put the word out to the corps and have a USMC station on the air in the future?
Ray F/KA3EKH
From: W2HX <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2022 10:04 AM
To: Ray Fantini <[email protected]>; Rob Flory <[email protected]>; mrca <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [MRCA] OMRN/Phone
What is WAR?
From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
On Behalf Of Ray Fantini
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2022 9:27 AM
To: Rob Flory <[email protected]>; mrca <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [MRCA] OMRN/Phone
Back at the Blue and Gray MVPA Show in Hagerstown last May worked WAR at the Pentagon several time on 5357 being that’s one of the channels that’s available to both Ham and military during the annual military cross band event. The advantage
to using sixty meters was you did not have to do a cross band operation.
Had a couple other Hams and served as control operator for several veterans during the event and WAR cycled thru several operators on their end during the day. Think they liked the idea that it was a station set up at a MVPA Show running
military equipment from a M151
Hard to imagine your son being grown and in the corps, remember him and my one daughter running all around the Howell building.
Both MRCA M&S Net and the MMRCG 7.296 Net take place on Saturday and are fairly regular although propagation has sucked lately. Don’t know about the 3885 Net being that I cant get inspired to get up that early and somehow always regarded
80 meters as the “Band of the Gas Bags” with 3885 heavily populated with people who want to talk for hours and say nothing, but maybe that’s just me.
Will have a bucket full of activity during the Gilbert event in a couple weeks, short and long range. Thin the web site is up to date for that.
http://www.mrca.ar88.net/Fall_Meet/fall_meet.html
Ray F/KA3EKH
From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
On Behalf Of Rob Flory
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2022 5:48 AM
To: mrca <[email protected]>
Subject: [MRCA] OMRN/Phone
My son, who used to attend MRCA events with me at Gilbert and InfoAge, is now in USMC communications.
He recently told me that his colleagues on the radio side want to work me on the air with my old stuff. I had the idea that maybe I could give them a shout out on OMRN/Phone as they listened to all the other cool old radios.
I tuned in briefly this morning and was reminded that the net sounds too much like regular operations on 3885, "solder to talk", long pauses during transmissions, old buzzard-style detailed stories about unrelated topics, etc. etc.
Ain't no 20-something wants to listen to that.
Anyone have a suggestion for an alternative way to reach this natural pool of future MRCA members?
73, K2WI