[Oremem/Idamem] All Oregon Washington Idaho Army MARS Members

[leo]

Greetings, All Members,

Much has happened in the last month or so and I thought this might be a good
time to do a review of those changes. Special thanks to the Oregon SMD for
his efforts in getting this email list up and running again.

First of all, we warmly welcome our new members AAR0OM/T-Larry Pudlow,
AAR0OL/T-Stephen Long, and AAR0QT/T-Tony Pasqualetti to the ranks of Oregon
Army MARS.  These gentlemen are moving right along with their training and
mastering their net skills and have the advantage of being in fairly spread
geographical areas so Oregon Army MARS gets more of the state covered for
traffic handling.  Their dedication to the missions of Army MARS is more
evident with their every net participation and that is the name of the game!
Thanks for joining us, gentlemen, and please know that every member of
Oregon Army MARS wishes you the very best and look forward to your continued
activity in our organization. We are the stronger for your participation!

Next, Oregon is now the Gateway for Region 10 as well as having our state
Gateway active.  The Region 10 Gateway was active for the recent Western
Area Annual Emergency Exercise (actually, it was up the night before the
exercise) and has been used by Oregon and Washington members ever since that
time. Here's the "scoop from group":

Callsign - AT0TFC
Frequency - KDI no offset LSB
Access:
Daily 1105 PDT to 1630 PDT
Daily 1805 PDT to 2330 PDT
Operations mode:  PACTOR ARQ
Total daily operational hours = 11
The sysop is generally available for "sysop calls" in case anyone
has need of assistance.  The main menu commands listing is
available with the command, "H" (no quotes) but generally the
following commands are the most used:
LT - lists all postings of NTS traffic
LB - lists all bulletins, training materials, and general info stuff
LL - lists all NTS traffic since your last linkup.
R (space) #### of msg allows readout of listings
The "send" commands are available from the "help" menu

This Gateway belongs to the members of Region 10 and should
be used daily.  Any suggestions for access or operations are
most welcome. Please address same to:
paupo@charter.net

Oregon Army MARS has also changed its Foxtrot nets to digital
training nets and re-instated one more to make four digital training
nets (multi-modal including voice) per week available to all MARS
members. Glad to have you check in anytime.  More on checkins after the
skeds:

Monday - 1701Z  on KFC no offset (KDD is the alternate) mode-AMTOR "B"
NCS - AAR0NH
Wednesday - same time and frequencies, mode-AMTOR "B"
NCS - AAR0NH
Friday - same time and frequencies, mode-PACTOR FEC
NCS - AAR0DF (WA.)
Saturday - same time and frequencies, mode-AMTOR "B"
NCS - AAR0JY

All nets open with the mode designated above, but here's the good news -
ALL NETS ARE MULTI-MODAL so one may check in on voice and then
change to whatever modes are available to the net members.  We are
anxious to work in the sound card modes, so don't be shy.  One may
get the net structures from the preamble.  ALL MARS MEMBERS ARE
MOST WELCOME! Hone your digital net procedure skills, along with the
digital protocols and prowords and prosigns.  We are all learning, so the
object is to expand our knowledge and skills through practice and
mistakes...
we all make them and we use these mistakes as part of our learning format.
Don't be shy.  If one does not have the digital modes up and running as yet
they can still check in by voice and get the feel of the nets and meet the
members on voice.  These are "down-home" training sessions and all MARS
members are welcome.

Close examination will show that Oregon has dropped the RTTY digital mode
from the digital training nets.  Most stations would only copy from 40 to
70%
of RTTY transmissions and that is not enough accuracy for MARS operations.
Sorry, but I feel a greater sense of loss from MARS dropping CW nets - now
there was accuracy and speed, along with a great deal of fun.  Sincerely
wish
we could re-instate those nets!  Anyone interested in doing so, please let
me
know - I'll petition the SMD and HQ for special sanctioned nets...all they
can
say is no.

Well, that rounds it out for this email.  Still waiting for our first Idaho
station to
linkup with the Region 10 Gateway - hint hint! - and hope that is soon.

Until next time, ya'll keep on keepin' on and ...

73's
leo
AAR0NH