As Winlink Wednesday continues to grow, we look for opportunities to encourage increased participation, and answer the question: Which Wednesday?
Operational timeframe
Winlink Wednesday started as a Virginia-focused weekly net, and more and more includes participants from around the country, and all around the world. To borrow from the author William Gibson, next Wednesday is almost here but it's not evenly experienced. One goal of the net is to be a weekly net that occurs on Wednesday, and we recognize that Wednesday lasts around the world for longer than 24 hours.
Starting with Episode #374, the reminders posted to this website, to Winlink, Facebook and Google Groups, will list the operational timeframe as "Wednesday, 0000-2359" but without a specific time zone reference. The net will accept check-ins during the period of Tuesday 1200 UTC through Thursday 1200 UTC. This gives ample time to send and receive net check-ins on "Wednesday", with a definitive cut off for inclusion in the roster.
New Peer-to-Peer (P2P) session
Alternate Net Control Stations, for the morning Ardop and evening Vara HF P2P sessions, were added in June, 2020, and helped to solve serious pile-ups that were occuring. Since that time, additional alternate NCS have been added, and expanded to cover the 80m, 40m, 30m, and 20m bands. The net reminders used to request checking into only one P2P station, but that was quietly dropped with the start of Year Eight in August, 2023. Feel free to check into more than one P2P station, for one or both sessions.
Also starting with Episode #374, the P2P session time will expand beyond the Eastern US time zone, and include a block of time and targets for the Pacific. The overall time remains the same: morning Ardop from 0730 to 0930 (7:30a-9:30a), and evening Vara HF from 1900 to 2130 (7p-9:30p).
Gary Goetz, K7WZX, will join the other alternate NCS and run both the morning Ardop and evening Vara HF P2P sessions. Gary will be available starting on 7080 dial (7081.5 center), for both wide and narrow sessions. The morning Ardop will be from 0730 to 0930 PT (Wed 1530 UTC to Wed 1730 UTC). The evening Vara HF will be from 1900 to 2130 PT (Thu 0300 UTC to Thu 0530 UTC).
If you haven't given P2P a try, due to distance and/or time, please give Gary's station a try! You might also have luck reaching other alternate NCS, who run time-extended sessions on 40m, 30m, and 20m. See the weekly reminder for available alternate NCS, and watch for the comments posted to the Virginia EmComm FB group weekly reminder, for details about active stations. The extended sessions are generally available from 0600 to 1200 ET, and 1400 to 2130 ET.
If you are interested in the possibility of joining as an alternate NCS, please contact me.
Please note the following P2P bugs!
Ardop P2P has a bug that causes looping on initial sessions. If you are getting connected and have a great signal, but keep getting disconnected quickly, completely close your Ardop P2P session and open a new session. The looping will be fixed and your message will transfer.
Vara HF P2P will answer to more than one calling station if more than one station call at the same time. There is no way to prevent this besides holding off if you hear other stations trying to connect. Try not to double on other stations. The receiving side will answer to the first, and then during their connection preamble, answer to the second. Both calling stations then continue to send the long preamble, with nothing but NACKs from the receiving side. This goes on until the connection timeout (long), or reset by the receiving side (short, but often just re-occurs).
For best results, please follow these P2P best practices:
- Make sure your message is marked as Peer-to-Peer and in the Outbox, and use a P2P session type (Ardop P2P, Vara HF P2P)
- Listen for a clear frequency
- Look at the TNC waterfall for a clear frequency
- Don't ignore the pop-up when the session/TNC indicates the frequency might be busy
- If busy, listen for the complete session end CW IDs; only two CW IDs back-to-back
- Try once or twice to connect, and if unsuccessful, hold off and try again later
- Take your time, the sessions are long enough to accommodate all participants
A month of Wednesdays
You can always send the standard single-line check-in in a plain message, no forms or templates or attachments, any week in the month. The net follows this weekly breakdown during the month:
- 1st Wednesday: optional weather snapshot added as a second line to the standard single-line check-in
- 2nd Wednesday: standard single-line check-in
- 3rd Wednesday: ICS-213 general message form with the standard single-line check-in in the form message body (field 7)
- 4th Wednesday: standard single-line check-in
- 5th Wednesday: standard single-line check-in (when applicable)
The standard single-line check-in should always start with your callsign, and be mindful of typos. Follow the callsign with your name, location, and the mode used to send the check-in. The reminder requests location as "city or town, county, state", but we recognize this is generalized and that your location might not match. Use a location as you prefer, or how you would describe it to receive postal mail. For instance, since I live in the unincorporated area of the county, and as Virginia has Independent Cities, I use the location simply as "Chesterfield, VA".
The weather snapshot does not have a fixed format, but generally follows the form "observation time, weather conditions, temperature". Use what you are comfortable with, or how you would describe the weather to a friend. Please, no METAR or similar compressed/generated formats, and no image attachments. Feel free to include the weather any week, but only on the 1st Wednesday will it be included in the roster.
The USA ICS Forms > ICS-213 General Message is a standard form for US participants and included by default in Winlink Express, and a good general message form. If your locality has a similar form, such as the IMS Form 213 in Canada, please feel free to use that in place of the ICS-213.
de KN4LQN
|