Monday Night Net

A directed net held every Monday night at 1930h on the CMD31 repeater (146.730 MHz, “-” offset, CTCSS 114.8) bringing together the San Mateo County, Southcoast communities of La Honda, Loma Mar, Pescadero, San Gregorio, South Skyline and neighboring areas for training in emergency communications and for neighborly talk.

The format is simple: The net control station will request any stations that wish to participate check in by giving their call sign. Check in requests may be grouped by region (eg; La Honda, Loma Mar, Pescadero, etc.) or by call sign (eg; call sign suffix beginning “A” through “F”, etc.) or another way at the net control’s instruction to keep everyone from answering at once. The net control station acknowledges the stations’ checking in and after all participants’ call signs have been collected goes back through the list of stations asking each in turn to contribute to the discussion (often: “How was your weekend?”) After all checked in stations have taken their turn, the net control station will call for any missed or late check ins, handle their contributions if there are any, and close out the net.

Stations participating in a directed net must not transmit unless directed to do so by the net control station. When two stations transmit at the same time (called a “double”) the result is usually unintelligible. Without the usual cues it would be hard to judge when to jump in, so the net control station does the job of keeping order. If there is a priority (time sensitive) or emergency (grave threat to life or property) message it can be announced at any time by waiting for a pause between transmissions and giving your call sign with the word “priority” or “emergency” and waiting for acknowledgment by the net control station. All other stations must stop transmitting if they hear a priority or emergency message. It is excellent operating procedure to allow at minimum a one to three second gap between transmissions in case someone needs emergency help. It is also a very good idea to wait a beat after pressing the transmit switch before speaking. This allows receivers a chance to “open” their squelch circuit: If you begin speaking immediately there’s a good chance your first few syllables will be cut off.

It is standard operating procedure that if a repeater is down or out of range you should transmit on the output frequency in simplex mode. In the case of CMD31 (146.730 MHz, “-” offset, CTCSS 114.8) you would transmit on 146.730 MHz, no offset, CTCSS 114.8 which is named CMD31D in our Coastside channel naming convention. Nearby stations monitoring the repeater output frequency will hear your direct transmission and may be instructed to also switch to “Direct,” to relay messages or tune to another frequency as needed to continue.