DAREN of WV News January 24, 2010 (.915)
Kenneth Harris WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103
http://www.wc8ec.org
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 MHz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com. A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'. The DAREN News can also be found on the wc8ec.org website.
While there's not much information to pass along, I'll go through a few items about Packet Radio. Once in awhile you may see some strange callsigns on Packet Radio that don't look quite right. You might see callsigns that aren't really callsigns. You may see things like "CALL", "NODE", "NOCALL, etc. The reason you see such things is because a space was put between two words when programming the callsign or NODE name in your TNC. Sometimes it's because the TNC is something other then a Kantronics TNC. Most TNCs allow you to abbreviate some of the input commands. For example, when making a connection to another station, NODE, or PBBS, you can type word "CONNECT" followed by the Callsign, NODE, or PBBS name. Or, you can type just a "C" followed by the Callsign, NODE, or PBBS name. The same thing is true about programming your Callsign in a TNC. You can either type "MYCALL" followed by a Callsign, or type just the word "MY" followed by a Callsign. When programming the Callsign or NODE Name in a TNC for the NODE, you can type either "MYNODE" or "MYN" followed by a callsign or a NODE Name. What you need to be aware of is not inserting a <space> in the word "MYCALL" or "MYNODE". If you place a space between MY and CALL, you will have just programmed the callsign of your TNC as "CALL". If you happen to place a <space> between MY and NODE, you will have just programmed the TNC with the Callsign as "NODE". These are just a couple of examples of how strange callsigns are seen on Packet. The best thing to do after programming your TNC Callsign, or NODE Name, is to ask the TNC what its Callsign is before you get on the air. You really should ask the TNC its callsign every time you're ready to get on the air, especially if the TNC has been left alone, or has been turned off any length of time. Someone else may have used the Packet station, and their callsign may still be in it. TNCs that are not Kantronics, such as MFJ, sometime lose their callsign, and default back to the callsign of "NOCALL" when turn on. If you don't check the TNC callsign before you get on the air, you may be using someone else's callsign, or using the callsign of "CALL", NODE", or NOCALL". And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
There were 67 check-ins again to this week's State Wide DAREN Net. Ray Gorrell, WV8RG, who's been participating in the net since December 25, 1993, has completed 800 check-ins and will be receiving his certificate. There was one new check-in to the net this week, and that was Shawn Wolfe, W8SJW, from Keyser. I want to welcome Shawn to the net and hope he participates as often as possible. There was one station that checked into the net this week with the callsign of "NODE-13". The station checked in at about 5:00 PM on Saturday. From the looks of the SSID of -13, the station went through three NODEs to get to the Net Control Station. If you checked into the net at about that time, don't see your callsign on the Net Announcement this week, and think it may have been you, let me know so that I can update your participation records.