You mentioned the time-out function on a repeater and that brought to mind an incident that happened during a hospital drill several years ago. In San Diego, ARES participates in hospital drill once or twice a year. We usually have a primary net on a UHF repeater and then use secondary and tertiary repeaters or simplex frequencies for passing traffic. We had a situation where one location had to pass a somewhat lengthy message to another location. They were directed to a secondary repeater in order to not tie up the primary net frequency. During the course of passing the traffic, the operator paused to let the repeater reset and as soon as she did, someone not involved in the drill jumped in wanting to chit chat with the operator. It took intervention from the net control (who was monitoring the frequency) to get the individual off the frequency. I suggest that, as part of any future presentation on passing traffic, you encourage the use of the phrase "more to follow" when an operator has to pause to reset a repeater or needs to pause to catch their breath on a simplex frequency.
Thank you for the emphasis on using ITU/NATO phonetics.
You mentioned the time-out function on a repeater and that brought to mind an incident that happened during a hospital drill several years ago. In San Diego, ARES participates in hospital drill once or twice a year. We usually have a primary net on a UHF repeater and then use secondary and tertiary repeaters or simplex frequencies for passing traffic. We had a situation where one location had to pass a somewhat lengthy message to another location. They were directed to a secondary repeater in order to not tie up the primary net frequency. During the course of passing the traffic, the operator paused to let the repeater reset and as soon as she did, someone not involved in the drill jumped in wanting to chit chat with the operator. It took intervention from the net control (who was monitoring the frequency) to get the individual off the frequency.
I suggest that, as part of any future presentation on passing traffic, you encourage the use of the phrase "more to follow" when an operator has to pause to reset a repeater or needs to pause to catch their breath on a simplex frequency.
Howdy from Bakersfield.
"Count to 3 before you Key"