The “Net”, which is short for “network” in Amateur Radio is a daily, weekly or monthly meeting on-air of Amateurs to pass message traffic, make contacts or simply sit and “rag-chew”. Rag-chew is just sitting and talking about various aspects of the hobby, weather, or just about anything.
The Net goes back a long time in ham radio. But, it’s not just for hams. The military uses Nets and what are called “Net Control Stations” to open up or start a net, to invite in the “attendees” and then get message traffic from them.
The Net Control station is usually (in ham) someone in a club or the originator of the net, who calls the net to order, and takes “check ins”, people who have message traffic or want to be listed on the roster.
I’m bringing up Net stations because this is a convenient way of organizing a group of radio communications people into doing an on-air meeting and passing along information. Let’s assume you’re NOT a ham radio operator. How would this help you? Well, there are a couple of things that might be beneficial.
First if you are listening into a radio frequency, you can gain knowledge from the net by just listening to the routine, or to the information being passed. You too, could run your own net (if you were a Ham) - but again, since you’re not let’s look at something else you might do.
Second, you might start your own network. That’s right. You could get your neighbors who might be interested in keeping in touch once a week or even daily, and run your own net on your own radio systems.
I’m talking about General Mobile Radio Service or GMRS (or the alternative Family Radio Service).
You might be a prepper if you have some of these radios laying around on your shelves, and wonder to yourself sometimes why you bought them specifically. Well, now you can put them to good use.
I’ve put together a couple of papers on HOW to set up your own simple radio net with neighbors or friends that are relatively close to you. There are some limitations on distances, and radio frequencies, licenses and so forth, but if you are interested, take a look at the paper I will upload here later.
Thanks for starting this!
73 KJ7VRY