Maine Traffic Exercise 2020

A few years ago I asked this group for members that would be willing to receive traffic from radiogram newcomers in Maine. I got about two dozen responses. This prompted a few people to try sending traffic through our section net and a small handful have kept it up.

We're now pushing (again) to get interest from hams in Maine to originate traffic. This is planned as a statewide effort and it has come about as a result of our recent statewide SET where relaying messages was a major goal. We did this via VHF simplex and the various ARES/Emcomm groups had to establish relays. One message went the entire width of the state. Accuracy and efficiency were significant issues with lots of problems ranging from arbitrary phonetics to missing content to misspelled words.

What we'd like to do is get a dozen or two traffic handlers that are active participants on nets to use as addressees and who would be willing to reply back to the sending station. Having known quantities as recipients would provide a good turnaround and the people sending the messages will get a prompt reply thereby building some confidence in the network.

If you are interested, please respond via email to kb1tce@belljar.net.

Thanks much.

73, Steve KB1TCE