NET-120
COMMUNICATION TRAINING REVIEW
Modified from a Waller County ARES training article
Written by Christine Smith, N5CAS (sk)
Over the past couple months we have covered topics ranging from basic communications principles to preparing for deployment. Are you ready? Let’s review…
First, make sure you are not interrupting unless you have emergency traffic so…listen. It’s hard to get your message through when you’re doubling with another station.
Remember that it takes a second for repeaters to open their transmitters so when talking on a repeater be sure to key up the microphone for a second or two before you start communicating, let’s give the repeater itself time to “key up.”
Speak slowly and speak clearly so it will be intelligible to the net control operator. If you are passing messages, remember that the person at the other end is trying to write down what you are saying so…speak…slowly. It doesn’t hurt to imagine that you are trying to write it down as you are speaking.
Avoid contractions. Do not say “can’t”, say “can not” or “unable”. Also something like “affirmative” and “negative” rather than “yes” or “no” will be much clearer.
When you are involved in Public Service or emergency nets, you will often be assigned a tactical call sign. Do not forget that the FCC requires you to transmit your legal call sign every ten minutes and at the end of your transmission. “Shelter One” (a possible tactical call sign) makes it much easier for the net control station to determine who you are but the FCC does not know ‘shelter one’.
When transmitting numbers, be sure to speak them individually. “26895” should be spoken as “two six eight nine five” not “twenty six eight ninety five.” This makes the message much easier for the other person to write it correctly.
There are two types of nets – formal and informal. Formal nets have different functions like traffic, progress, check-in, assignment, etc. In a real situation, we might have a “resource net” on one frequency which would be your initial contact when responding to a call out to report availability for assignment. Net Control will provide instructions such as your tactical call sign, the assignment location and the person to whom you should report. You might be instructed to go to a “staging area”, to a shelter, to the EOC, etc. When you arrive and are prepared, you should notify the Resource net control operator and you will be given instructions to switch frequencies to a different net – probably a course, progress or operations net. You will then be part of what is known as a “tactical net”. This is where the real time coordination of activities will be taking place. If you have messages to be relayed, this is the NCO you would notify. If the net is quite busy with much activity, the NCO may advise that you and the person you are passing the traffic to should switch to another specified frequency. There may be a ‘traffic net’ set up, or you might just move to a simplex frequency of your choice or another repeater that both parties can communicate on. This frees up the tactical net for net related traffic.
If you have to leave your station for any length of time, be sure to notify the NCO of your intentions and the approximate duration of your down time as well as your assignment supervisor. We do not want the NCO to waste time trying to call you when you have stepped away from the station.
Remember that law enforcement may be at your location; if you are asked to stop transmitting or to move to a different location – DO SO IMMEDIATELY. There might be a very good reason. If this happens and you can move to a safe location, then let the NCO know as soon as possible. If you are refused access to your assigned location, never argue. Move as instructed and contact net control as soon as possible and let them handle the problem.
FORMAL MESSAGE HANDLING
As you know, National Traffic System (NTS) message handling is a newly added requirement in our Taskbooks. There are training nets to help familiarize you with formal message handling and you are strongly encouraged to participate in those nets. Get net schedules on our https://stxd14ares.org/frequencies/ page.
Go back through the message handling training that we have covered in trainings MSG-101 through MSG-107 for review. You might want to create a little “cheat sheet” with some information that might be needed when sending formal messages until you become proficient. It would not hurt to have some notations regarding what the different precedence types are as well as the handling instructions. I know I do not pass enough traffic to remember these codes and I doubt if you will either when the time comes.
All messages sent or received should be logged with the date/time sent or received and to who it was sent or from who it was received. This information may be needed at a later date and you need to have this for after action reports. Some folks will actually write notations on the message form itself and then transfer over to the log after. This is really your preference as long as the messages are kept in an orderly fashion and transferred to the log in a timely manner.
Do not forget that normally you will not be the “author” of the message so you should never edit or add to them. These should be in written form, should be transmitted exactly as they are given to you and must be signed off by an official. The other situation might be messages that you would “author” such as request for supplies, for relief operators, etc. In that instance you would want to log these for your record with time delivered and to whom but they would not generally be a written message or need an official sign-off.
Successful communications depends on everything from spare batteries or fuel for your generator to a “good copy” response from the recipient. For that to happen, it is critical that you go prepared. For messaging you should take binders or clip boards to hold forms, logs, etc. on which to write. You should take copies of message forms, log forms, after action reports and other paperwork covered in this and other training articles. To get those messages in or out, you need to ensure that your equipment is up to snuff and that you have enough experience to make it all work.
That concludes tonight’s training. Are there any questions, comments or suggested additions to this material?
Thanks, this is (callsign) clear to net control.
Send corrections, modifications, updates or suggestions to k5prs@aol.com