GE, Operators.
I don’t think this week’s traffic will interfere with any IDA recovery efforts, but if you’d feel more comfortable sitting this week out, I’m sure everyone will understand.
With that said:
 
The ARRL Annual Simulated Emergency Test is coming up in October.
For Week #40, we’re going to revisit the “Key” method of generating real-time exercise traffic – as opposed to pre-written or “made up” traffic.
For the newer members of the SNJ WW Net, we’re going to start out with the basic concept this time, just to keep it simple. Here’s the plan:
 
The Net will send the following ICS213 message to SNJOEM. Fill in the Header and Footer as written. You’ll notice that there are two message options in the Message Body. If your birthday is on an even numbered day…Send the first message. If it’s odd, send the second. That’s it. Pretty simple, eh?
 
The basic idea is this: Your local EC would distribute this form prior to an exercise. Once the exercise begins the EC would send out a “key” to be used with this form. We’re going to use your birthday this time. You would not know which reply to send until the key was sent. That’s the real-time part. On the other side, your EC wouldn’t know which reply he would be getting (unless he/she knew everyone’s birthday date in advance).

For digital traffic, the form is usually distributed as an image file, rather than a PDF. This prevents operators from just “cut and pasting” the correct message into their Winlink Form. This means spelling counts, just like in the real world.
 
Next week we’ll move from two to ten possible replies. That’s the way it’s meant to be used.
Until then…
Have fun.
73
Tim
SNJOEM