This Thursday (Sept 24), our 19:30 net will be replaced by the Coast-to-Coast exercise to give everyone a chance to participate if they wish to. The goal of the exercise is for operators to practice their operating their VHF/UHF radio in an adhoc fashion:

• At 19:00, secondary net controllers will check in on the Island Trunk System (ITS) with the main net controller and then move off to their respective frequencies (other repeaters or simplex frequencies).
• After that, everyone else will be checking in on the ITS and will be asked to provide some basic information and will then be dispatched to another frequency where the process will be repeated.

The instructions are purposely vague to simulate a situation where operators have to follow instructions on the spot, but I can tell you that in the background, things are very well organized and it should be a lot of fun!

Things you can do to prepare:

• Have a channel list of your radio so you can efficiently switch frequencies.
• Be able to use the VFO on your radio to use simplex or repeater frequencies (with offset and tone) that are not programmed in. On this page, I explain how anyone can make a quick reference page on how to do this for their radio.