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Repeater etiquette
#1
From the WRA site:

The 3-minute timeout

* Our repeaters normally have a 3 minute "timeout" setting. The 3 minute length is meant as a maximum length, not a suggested length.
* It's considered good etiquette to keep your transmission length shorter than this, especially if there are a lot of people in a QSO, or during busy times on the repeater.
* If you exceed the 3 minute limit, the repeater controller will cut off your transmission, and when you unkey, you'll hear a message from the controller letting you know that you have timed out the repeater.
* The controller timer resets ¾ of a second after the transmitting station stops transmitting, so “quick keying” will mean that the length of your transmission is added on to the length of the previous transmission. In other words, if the person just previous to you speaks for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, at 16 seconds into your transmission you'll get cut off. This is to encourage users to leave a gap between transmissions.
* Intentionally dropping your carrier just long enough to allow the time-out timer to reset is considered extremely rude, since you are then monopolizing the repeater
K1RCT - Rob
W1NRG Station Activities Manager
Home Email

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#2
[quote='K1RCT' pid='2205' dateline='1508284532']
From the WRA site:

The 3-minute timeout

* Our repeaters normally have a 3 minute "timeout" setting. The 3 minute length is meant as a maximum length, not a suggested length.
* It's considered good etiquette to keep your transmission length shorter than this, especially if there are a lot of people in a QSO, or during busy times on the repeater.
* If you exceed the 3 minute limit, the repeater controller will cut off your transmission, and when you unkey, you'll hear a message from the controller letting you know that you have timed out the repeater.
* The controller timer resets ¾ of a second after the transmitting station stops transmitting, so “quick keying” will mean that the length of your transmission is added on to the length of the previous transmission. In other words, if the person just previous to you speaks for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, at 16 seconds into your transmission you'll get cut off. This is to encourage users to leave a gap between transmissions.
* Intentionally dropping your carrier just long enough to allow the time-out timer to reset is considered extremely rude, since you are then monopolizing the repeater
[/quote]

Excellent Rob. Well explained.
73, Billl, W1KKF
Reply
#3
Some repeaters have a courtesy beep to enforce the pause between transmissions. Fortunately the Wallingford repeater utilizes a minimum of honks, beeps and quacks.

If we could only get a 3 minute timer for our club nets....


[quote='K1RCT' pid='2205' dateline='1508284532']
From the WRA site:

The 3-minute timeout

* Our repeaters normally have a 3 minute "timeout" setting. The 3 minute length is meant as a maximum length, not a suggested length.
* It's considered good etiquette to keep your transmission length shorter than this, especially if there are a lot of people in a QSO, or during busy times on the repeater.
* If you exceed the 3 minute limit, the repeater controller will cut off your transmission, and when you unkey, you'll hear a message from the controller letting you know that you have timed out the repeater.
* The controller timer resets ¾ of a second after the transmitting station stops transmitting, so “quick keying” will mean that the length of your transmission is added on to the length of the previous transmission. In other words, if the person just previous to you speaks for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, at 16 seconds into your transmission you'll get cut off. This is to encourage users to leave a gap between transmissions.
* Intentionally dropping your carrier just long enough to allow the time-out timer to reset is considered extremely rude, since you are then monopolizing the repeater
[/quote]
Reply
#4
Hmmm... just thinking in-print here: What if we asked The Swed to turn his quad to an offender, fired up his linear and tune-up on him. May fry out his front end.

Just a thought!

;)
K1RCT - Rob
W1NRG Station Activities Manager
Home Email

Reply
#5
A club net should be conducted in a manner that encourages participation in number. Towards that end, it seems to me that the same courtesies should be recommended regardless of whether or not a repeater is involved.

I have routinely been discouraged from calling into one of our club nets when a party is present as its subject matter rambles on and on in excessive detail while monopolizing net time. I wish there was a way to delicately turn this about without offending the person.

W1DQ
Reply
#6
Some history might be relevant here. MARC used to conduct a net on a two meter simplex frequency long ago. The information in this post is just a breif history about how the current club 2 meter net came about.

When I was the ARES EC for the town of Wallingford (ancient history) I was asked if I would volunteer to become the ADEC for ARES AREA II North. The plan was to split up AREA II into two sectons, one consisting of towns in the Northern most section of ARES II and the other in the Southern sectrion of AREA II.

One of the first things I did as the ADEC of the new Northern section of ARES AREA II was to start a 2-meter net using the W1KKF-Repeater. It was an open net but was primarily attended by mostly MARC members. When I ran the net, I would first call for checkin's of any AREA II North ECs. Some of the towns in AREA II North were of course Meriden, Wallingford, Durham and Cheshire (that I remember off the top of my head) Dan W1DMM was a frequent weekly check in among others checking in as the EC of Durham.

The procedure was to have each town's EC check in, with his location, whether or not he could operate with battery power and if he had traffic. This would go quickly unless there was traffic to pass. The net was not part of any official traffic network but I always checked for traffic. Once in a while I would arrange for one of the ECs to generate a traffic message within the net to expose the people who were listening to how a properly handled traffic message should be handled.

Once that was done, I then called for any regular check ins and the net would continue.

The net was, in it's early years started at 7:30 PM local time every Tuesday, and of course on the 147.36 W1KKF repeater. As the net became popular we started to have a problem. The club also had a regular SSB net on 10 meters on Tuesday nights. That net started at 8:00 PM local time. And we soon had a situation where many of our 2m net people also checked into the 10m net. The problem was that there wasn't enough time (30 minutes) to complete a full round table of discussion before the 10m net started and we had people dropping out of the 2m net to check into the 10m net.

And THAT is why I changed the official start time of the 2m net to start at 7 PM. This gave us plenty of time so everyone had a chance to participate in a full round robin discussion.

As net control I always started the net at 7 PM and always kept the net alive until at least 7:45. This gave check ins the ability to log in during a full hour.

Eventually we had a bunch of regulars checking in the first half hour and others checking in in the 2nd half hour. This allowed everyone a decent amount of air-time minutes. I also used to occasionally have one of the ECs generate and pass a "test" traffic message .. which was destined to be sent to one of other people on the net. This was just to give my ECs and others interested in handling traffic some experience.

Later I moved on to other areas and was no longer the EC and ADEC, but continued to run the club's 2m net. Then several years ago, I was looking for some part time net control stations to take over once in while so I could attend to other things. That's when Todd, K1TDO volunteered. I set him up and he obviously enjoyed it and volunteered to be the regular net control. I gave him suggestions and notes and after a while he eventually came with a procedure that is now in use.

I have not been involved with the 2m net officially since then. For the last two years I have been very busy re-building a fixer-upper QTH. Still don't have any real antennas up yet.

I always ran the 2m net a little differently than Todd. I did not set up the "flow" of the net control as he does. Rather I would call on each logged in station to make a transmission, one by one.

After checking off the logged in ECs and then the list of others I would call on each person to make a transmission and then revert control back to me. Personally I like that better and is probably because I wanted to have more "control" over the net. This one by one contact at a time actually kept things flowing and because every transmission ended by coming back to me (as net control) I could make sure to listen for any new or late check ins.

Sometimes when net control dictates a list of successive checks that might be 5 or 6 contacts long, the stations tend to "pass the mic" to the next station and the next station grabs the frequency too quickly which at best doesn't give any new check in any time to break the net, or at worse causes a time out.

When I orginally set up Todd I told him to run the net any way he felt comfortable as long as it conforms to normal net formality and procedures. Todd has been doing a great job and has been a reliable net control now for many years.

W1DQ brings up a point that may relevant to our current 2m net. I will try to get up something (antenna) up here in North Central CT so I can again check in to the two meter net in more regular. I'll talk to Todd about this.

73, Rich WA1TRY
Rich - WA1TRY 
Reply
#7
[quote='WA1TRY - Rich' pid='2212' dateline='1508355653']
Some history might be relevant here. MARC used to conduct a net on a two meter simplex frequency long ago. The information in this post is just a breif history about how the current club 2 meter net came about.

When I was the ARES EC for the town of Wallingford (ancient history) I was asked if I would volunteer to become the ADEC for ARES AREA II North. The plan was to split up AREA II into two sectons, one consisting of towns in the Northern most section of ARES II and the other in the Southern sectrion of AREA II.

One of the first things I did as the ADEC of the new Northern section of ARES AREA II was to start a 2-meter net using the W1KKF-Repeater. It was an open net but was primarily attended by mostly MARC members. When I ran the net, I would first call for checkin's of any AREA II North ECs. Some of the towns in AREA II North were of course Meriden, Wallingford, Durham and Cheshire (that I remember off the top of my head) Dan W1DMM was a frequent weekly check in among others checking in as the EC of Durham.

The procedure was to have each town's EC check in, with his location, whether or not he could operate with battery power and if he had traffic. This would go quickly unless there was traffic to pass. The net was not part of any official traffic network but I always checked for traffic. Once in a while I would arrange for one of the ECs to generate a traffic message within the net to expose the people who were listening to how a properly handled traffic message should be handled.

Once that was done, I then called for any regular check ins and the net would continue.

The net was, in it's early years started at 7:30 PM local time every Tuesday, and of course on the 147.36 W1KKF repeater. As the net became popular we started to have a problem. The club also had a regular SSB net on 10 meters on Tuesday nights. That net started at 8:00 PM local time. And we soon had a situation where many of our 2m net people also checked into the 10m net. The problem was that there wasn't enough time (30 minutes) to complete a full round table of discussion before the 10m net started and we had people dropping out of the 2m net to check into the 10m net.

And THAT is why I changed the official start time of the 2m net to start at 7 PM. This gave us plenty of time so everyone had a chance to participate in a full round robin discussion.

As net control I always started the net at 7 PM and always kept the net alive until at least 7:45. This gave check ins the ability to log in during a full hour.

Eventually we had a bunch of regulars checking in the first half hour and others checking in in the 2nd half hour. This allowed everyone a decent amount of air-time minutes. I also used to occasionally have one of the ECs generate and pass a "test" traffic message .. which was destined to be sent to one of other people on the net. This was just to give my ECs and others interested in handling traffic some experience.

Later I moved on to other areas and was no longer the EC and ADEC, but continued to run the club's 2m net. Then several years ago, I was looking for some part time net control stations to take over once in while so I could attend to other things. That's when Todd, K1TDO volunteered. I set him up and he obviously enjoyed it and volunteered to be the regular net control. I gave him suggestions and notes and after a while he eventually came with a procedure that is now in use.

I have not been involved with the 2m net officially since then. For the last two years I have been very busy re-building a fixer-upper QTH. Still don't have any real antennas up yet.

I always ran the 2m net a little differently than Todd. I did not set up the "flow" of the net control as he does. Rather I would call on each logged in station to make a transmission, one by one.

After checking off the logged in ECs and then the list of others I would call on each person to make a transmission and then revert control back to me. Personally I like that better and is probably because I wanted to have more "control" over the net. This one by one contact at a time actually kept things flowing and because every transmission ended by coming back to me (as net control) I could make sure to listen for any new or late check ins.

Sometimes when net control dictates a list of successive checks that might be 5 or 6 contacts long, the stations tend to "pass the mic" to the next station and the next station grabs the frequency too quickly which at best doesn't give any new check in any time to break the net, or at worse causes a time out.

When I orginally set up Todd I told him to run the net any way he felt comfortable as long as it conforms to normal net formality and procedures. Todd has been doing a great job and has been a reliable net control now for many years.

W1DQ brings up a point that may relevant to our current 2m net. I will try to get up something (antenna) up here in North Central CT so I can again check in to the two meter net in more regular. I'll talk to Todd about this.

73, Rich WA1TRY
[/quote]


Thank you Rob and Rich. I would like to ad that I allow check ins to let the repeater drop BEFORE they take their turn so the time does not carry over as Rob and Rich said. That way you get your full three minutes time. I suggest writing down what you have to say so you can say it within your three minutes allowed time. If you can't say it in three minutes please don't say it or save it for another turn. You will get more than one turn if you check in early. Late check ins and late, late, late check ins don't get a turn. They just check in.

Also, Rich don't forget that KB1CIW, Bob Stephens, was Net Control before me. Some things he did we still do and he gave me the suggestion to make announcements after the Jeopardy question because that's when everyone is listening.

I am willing to change the format of the Net so there is no "flow" but rather we take turns one station at a time and pass it back to me when you are finished as that is how I run the SARA Net but we normally don't get a lot of check ins so I do it this way. Maybe, we can vote on it to see if people prefer one way over another?

Thank you, 73, Todd K1TDO
Reply
#8
[quote='K1TDO' pid='2220' dateline='1508697072']
[quote='WA1TRY - Rich' pid='2212' dateline='1508355653']
Some history might be relevant here. MARC used to conduct a net on a two meter simplex frequency long ago. The information in this post is just a breif history about how the current club 2 meter net came about.

When I was the ARES EC for the town of Wallingford (ancient history) I was asked if I would volunteer to become the ADEC for ARES AREA II North. The plan was to split up AREA II into two sectons, one consisting of towns in the Northern most section of ARES II and the other in the Southern sectrion of AREA II.

One of the first things I did as the ADEC of the new Northern section of ARES AREA II was to start a 2-meter net using the W1KKF-Repeater. It was an open net but was primarily attended by mostly MARC members. When I ran the net, I would first call for checkin's of any AREA II North ECs. Some of the towns in AREA II North were of course Meriden, Wallingford, Durham and Cheshire (that I remember off the top of my head) Dan W1DMM was a frequent weekly check in among others checking in as the EC of Durham.

The procedure was to have each town's EC check in, with his location, whether or not he could operate with battery power and if he had traffic. This would go quickly unless there was traffic to pass. The net was not part of any official traffic network but I always checked for traffic. Once in a while I would arrange for one of the ECs to generate a traffic message within the net to expose the people who were listening to how a properly handled traffic message should be handled.

Once that was done, I then called for any regular check ins and the net would continue.

The net was, in it's early years started at 7:30 PM local time every Tuesday, and of course on the 147.36 W1KKF repeater. As the net became popular we started to have a problem. The club also had a regular SSB net on 10 meters on Tuesday nights. That net started at 8:00 PM local time. And we soon had a situation where many of our 2m net people also checked into the 10m net. The problem was that there wasn't enough time (30 minutes) to complete a full round table of discussion before the 10m net started and we had people dropping out of the 2m net to check into the 10m net.

And THAT is why I changed the official start time of the 2m net to start at 7 PM. This gave us plenty of time so everyone had a chance to participate in a full round robin discussion.

As net control I always started the net at 7 PM and always kept the net alive until at least 7:45. This gave check ins the ability to log in during a full hour.

Eventually we had a bunch of regulars checking in the first half hour and others checking in in the 2nd half hour. This allowed everyone a decent amount of air-time minutes. I also used to occasionally have one of the ECs generate and pass a "test" traffic message .. which was destined to be sent to one of other people on the net. This was just to give my ECs and others interested in handling traffic some experience.

Later I moved on to other areas and was no longer the EC and ADEC, but continued to run the club's 2m net. Then several years ago, I was looking for some part time net control stations to take over once in while so I could attend to other things. That's when Todd, K1TDO volunteered. I set him up and he obviously enjoyed it and volunteered to be the regular net control. I gave him suggestions and notes and after a while he eventually came with a procedure that is now in use.

I have not been involved with the 2m net officially since then. For the last two years I have been very busy re-building a fixer-upper QTH. Still don't have any real antennas up yet.

I always ran the 2m net a little differently than Todd. I did not set up the "flow" of the net control as he does. Rather I would call on each logged in station to make a transmission, one by one.

After checking off the logged in ECs and then the list of others I would call on each person to make a transmission and then revert control back to me. Personally I like that better and is probably because I wanted to have more "control" over the net. This one by one contact at a time actually kept things flowing and because every transmission ended by coming back to me (as net control) I could make sure to listen for any new or late check ins.

Sometimes when net control dictates a list of successive checks that might be 5 or 6 contacts long, the stations tend to "pass the mic" to the next station and the next station grabs the frequency too quickly which at best doesn't give any new check in any time to break the net, or at worse causes a time out.

When I orginally set up Todd I told him to run the net any way he felt comfortable as long as it conforms to normal net formality and procedures. Todd has been doing a great job and has been a reliable net control now for many years.

W1DQ brings up a point that may relevant to our current 2m net. I will try to get up something (antenna) up here in North Central CT so I can again check in to the two meter net in more regular. I'll talk to Todd about this.

73, Rich WA1TRY
[/quote]


Thank you Rob and Rich. I would like to add that I allow check ins to let the repeater drop BEFORE they take their turn so the time does not carry over as Rob and Rich said. That way you get your full three minutes time. I suggest writing down what you have to say so you can say it within your three minutes allowed time. If you can't say it in three minutes please don't say it or save it for another turn. You will get more than one turn if you check in early. Late check ins and late, late, late check ins don't get a turn. They just check in.

Also, Rich don't forget that KB1CIW, Bob Stephens, was Net Control before me. Some things he did we still do and he gave me the suggestion to make announcements after the Jeopardy question because that's when everyone is listening.

I am willing to change the format of the Net so there is no "flow" but rather we take turns one station at a time and pass it back to me when you are finished as that is how I run the SARA Net but we normally don't get a lot of check ins so I do it this way. Maybe, we can vote on it to see if people prefer one way over another?

Thank you, 73, Todd K1TDO
[/quote]
Reply
#9
The new Net format will be that I will pass it to one station at a time then that station passes it back to myself. Instead of having stations pass it to each other. I will then ask Jim (N1ZN) for the Jeopardy question. Then I will ask for late, late, late check ins.
Then I will close the Net using the above posted new Net script.


Thank you, 73.
Todd David Olsen
Primary Net Control
Reply
#10
The primary use of the net has been the informal exchange of general information. Are you now limiting it to "check-ins having questions, comments, business or announcements for the Net"?
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