New Zealand Net News Nr 15, 19 October 2019

This is a fortnightly newsletter about the New Zealand Net.
If you would like to subscribe, please contact ZL1NZ.

Highlights

Happy Eastfest weekend everyone. It sounds like several NZ Netters will be travelling to Methven for this event at Mount Hutt Memorial Hall Theaterette. It starts at 10am Saturday, and Don ZL3DMC and Grant ZL2GD will be among the presenters (1st and 2nd slots on Saturday, I believe).

Here’s a message I sent to Grant this week on NZ Net, for passing along to Eastfest attendees:

NR60 R ZL1NZ 34/25 AUCKLAND 0800Z 16OCT19
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EASTFEST 2019 METHVEN NEW ZEALAND
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THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST IN NEW ZEALAND NET STOP WE
WELCOME ALL CW OPERATORS AT 2100 HOURS MONDAY TO FRIDAY
ON 3535 KHZ STOP 73
=
NEIL ZL1NZ NET MANAGER

I hope we can persuade Grant to give us a report on his NZ Net presentation for the next newsletter.

Conditions on 80 metres have been a bit noisy the past few days, but we’ve had good numbers of check-ins, and lots of chatting after the net. There’s also been lots of activity on 3515 where 5K0K has been active. Although their sigs have been weak here, the pileups have been loud. ?

Welcome to Dennis ZL1AZ from Kaikohe who made his first QNI to NZ Net a few days ago. Hope to hear you again soon Dennis.

A1 Club Straight Key Contest

This contest, organised by the A1 Club in Japan, will be held on Labour Weekend. It takes place on 80m and 40m, and it has some very interesting rules. For example, after a contact, the station that called CQ has to QSY so the other station can call CQ on the frequency. Then that station has to move after making a contact, and so on. The exchange, and scoring system are also a bit different. Has anyone tried this contest before?

Here are the details: http://a1club.net/contest/2019/a1test-rule-2019-DX.pdf

Don’t forget that NZ SKN will be Sunday 1 December, in case you’d like to let friends and family know that you will not be available that evening. ?

Net tip – checking in with your “sine”

A long-standing practice on CW nets is that stations can check-in with an abbreviated version of their callsign, known as their “sine”.

The advantage of this is that if two stations double, it gets sorted out faster than having to wait for both to finish their full callsigns. (Yes, you guys with QSK don’t have this problem!)

The choice is yours, but if you’d like to trying checking in this way, here’s how:

Decide what your “sine” will be, and stick with it. It should be just one or two characters. I use “Z” because it’s the last letter of my callsign. This evening, two FB ops checked in using the sines “FZ” and “WT” so you can probably guess who they were.

Net Control should acknowledge your “sine” by sending it back to you, just as we do when stations check in with their full callsign.

You then send your full callsign (we have to be legal, after all), signal report and QRU/QTC.

Net Control will respond with your signal report and give you direction (usually asking you to wait).

Suggestions?

If you have suggestions on how to make the NZ Net better, or things you’d like to see covered in these updates, please contact ZL1NZ. You might even like to write something for the newsletter.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you soon on the NZ Net!

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Neil Sanderson ZL1NZ, Net Manager
New Zealand Net (NZ NET)
3535.0 kHz at 9pm NZT Mon-Fri