Frequently, when I take a break from working 40m CW, I’ll give a shout out on our repeater (146.96-, 100 Hz PL) and catch someone coming home from a meeting or perhaps a late day at work. This evening, I connected with Rob, KC8RCO.
As it happens, his name came up last night when I visited the Novi Amateur Radio Club (NARC). Rob used to belong to NARC when he lived in that area. We got to talking about the club, and he mentioned that one of the things he used to enjoy about their weekly net is that every week one of the guys would read selected items from the late W5YI Report.
That got me thinking that we need to spice up our net a little. We do have guys report on their activities and upcoming events, such as hamfests and contests, but it’s hit and miss. Sometimes we have news and sometimes we don’t. If we could regularly have these interesting tidbits of information, then perhaps we’d have more participation.
So, I may twist a few arms to get guys to read excerpts from some of the various news sources out there. These include:
Another way to make a net more interesting is to have a “question of the week.” Rob mentioned that one question he’d heard asked is, “What’s the Worst Rig You Ever Owned”? He thought the answers given to that question helped him avoid buying a lemon. Other questions you could ask include:
- What’s the Best Rig You Ever Owned?
- What the Next Piece of Gear You Think You’ll Buy?
- What Mode Do You Currently Not Operate That You Want to Try?
- What’s the Best Deal You Ever Got on a Piece of Equipment?
The thought behind all this, of course, is to develop regular sources of interesting information. If your members tune into your net and hear something interesting and useful, it’s more likely that they’ll tune in again. Heck, they may even find something of their own to contribute from time to time.
The question of the week did provoke some discussions on the W8UM net. I think it would be worth a try.
Chuck AA8VS e-mailed me the following:
I like both of these ideas, and we are actually going to do the second one next summer. As you may know, we’ve recently converted a pop-up trailer donated by one of our members into a portable amateur radio station. We hauled it out to play radio with the LOSTeam a couple of weeks ago. Those guys do it ever week during the summer time, but we’re going to shoot for once a month next year…Dan
Rob, KB8RCO emailed me the following: