I don’t know about you, but I dislike the term “social distancing.” The distancing part is fine. We do need to keep a safe distance from one another, but don’t want to distance ourselves socially from one another. If anything, we need to come together more now than before this pandemic hit.
So, the question is, what can we do about it? Well, in a way, ham radio offers a perfect solution—communications! Ham radio lets us keep in touch with one another without being in physical contact.
Here in Ann Arbor, members of our club, ARROW have been congregating at 10 am and 7 pm on our 2 m repeater (146.96 MHz), and at 2 pm on the Brandmeister MI Talk Group (TG 3126). Please feel free to join us, even if you’re not an ARROW member. The nets are conducted in a roundtable format, with one of the participants (often Jay, WB8TKL) acting as the ringleader. We babble on about how we’re coping with this situation, including what projects we’re working on and what bands and modes we’re operating.
Another solution would be to hold club meetings online. Gil, N7GIL, emailed me a couple of days ago, describing how his club, the Ogden (UT) Amateur Radio Club, is keeping their members in touch. He writes:
Due to the concerns of the COVID-19 and “social distancing,” our monthly club meeting as well as other club meetings have been cancelled until further notice. Our club views this as an opportunity to show how amateur radio can solve problems. We will replace our “face to face meeting” with an “Over The Air net”.
I realize the idea of a net is not new, however, I am surprised that other clubs are not considering this option. Holding meetings on the air in this way has been met with great enthusiasm. This is as close to an actual emergency we can get. What a fantastic opportunity to exercise our privileges and show the world how creative hams really are.
We are planning an over the air meeting this following Saturday on our local club repeater. I will be net control and present the topic. My station consists of a FT3DR handheld at 300 mw feeding an Elk log periodic. In order to make the net more personal, it has been suggested that members submit a selfie for the club newsletter.
I would be happy to share details of what we are planning with you or any of your readers who are interested.
This sounds like a great plan to me. What, if anything is your club doing to keep club members close in your area?
Dan,
Thank you so much for sharing this on your blog. We have the means in place to continue to show our communities the underlying value and power of amateur radio.
Exercise the privileges you have earned and have fun.
73 de Gil
NG7IL
Bellevue ARC (suburb of Omaha) will be trying the net-as-meeting thing on Thursday. No actual club business can be concluded but a chance to make up for the lost social interaction.
The San Francisco Radio Club, W6PW, has initiated a COVID-19 Emergency Welfare Check Net 3 night per week on their local repeater.
https://www.sfarc.org/
Numerous clubs are taking to Zoom for their meetings. I like the novelty of on-air nets in lieu of regular club meetings, but half-duplex comms and lack of face-to-face really slows down communications for when real business is being discussed and decided upon.
That said, the repeaters in the my area have definitely gotten a lot more busy!
The MS Coast Amateur Radio Association met via our 2m repeater on Monday night. We hold a weekly 2m net on Tuesdays, so everybody knew all the steps going in. There were some minor changes to procedures to run it more as a net than the usual business meeting, and it worked really well. I think everyone appreciated using our gear “for real” this time.
I see several positive things happening as a result of this situation. First, local repeaters are getting a lot more use than they did prior to this pandemic, and that helps us as amateurs to occupy bandwidth for a justified purpose. This supports all those hams who do not get out a lot, and it provides human contact to be involved in QSOs no matter what the subject is. We can have social interaction with very little risk in this way. Amateur use of the bands is much higher now than it was just last month, and there is capacity to spare.
Another positive I see is the more we talk on air, the more we get to know one another. This is a great way to remember the names and calls of other hams and being in contact on a daily basis reinforces your memory and you begin to develop a deeper personal association with your fellow club members as well as get to be introduced to new members and/or the occasional person who happens to hear the traffic. Since I serve as NCS for a few local nets it has helped me to associate voices/names and calls.
Developing the ability to hold meetings online is also a good thing in case of problems like this and at other times when getting to meetings may be inadvisable, or impossible. Even when things return to a relative normal status, people who are unable to get around could benefit from a Skype-like online feed from the meeting. This will allow people who do not have the ability to drive to a meeting to attend and be part of the club so to speak. With amateur radio’s aging demographic, this may be an idea who’s time has come.
So while some may see this whole situation in a negative light, I believe it has the potential to provide some great benefits to amateur radio as a whole. I am encouraged by the recent influx of youth licensees, but we need more people becoming hams than are doing it now and this has been true for some time. Perhaps with these added technological developments we can encourage more participation in the hobby.
73, and see you on the radio!
Social distancing for the radio amateur:
http://qso365.co.uk/2020/03/social-distancing/
(anything to inject a little humour)