As of October 25, MCARES now hosts a semi-monthly Traffic Handling Training Net (THTN). The net meets the second and fourth Tuesday of every month at 20:00 on the Portland Amateur Radio Club (PARC) 147.180 MHz (103.5 Hz Tone) repeater. This is not one of the standard MC# repeaters so you will need to program this new frequency and tone into your radio. Eli, W7ELI, is the net manager and net members will be encouraged to volunteer for net control. This is a practice net only. Messages will not go beyond this net and will not be delivered.
We will practice sending by voice ICS 213 messages as well as NTS formatted messages, and we will practice logging these messages on the ICS 309 form. The net will include discussion of voice traffic handling and suggestions for improving one’s traffic sending and message formatting. Questions are encouraged and mistakes are simply a learning opportunity.
You can make up your own messages to send on the net, but we also have some sample messages available. Traffic handling guides and information can be found in the Traffic Handling section of our Training page. ICS 213 and 309 forms can be found on the Docs page.