Radio Nets

Back at Isla Coronados, I finally worked up the nerve to check in to one of the radio nets. It was the Amigo net in the morning, and all the people who check in all sound like they know each other, so it was slightly intimidating. The radio nets are daily congregations of cruisers on the radio at a specific time and frequency. Someone will be the net controller and everyone will check in and give their location and their current weather conditions. It’s partly for safety and partly for just socializing. We met Mark on sailing vessel Wendaway briefly in San Juanico, and after introductions, I’m pretty sure his next question was do you have an SSB radio and then do you want to be a net controller. Whoa, wait a second, I barely even check in and I hated the idea of the commitment. We are cruising after all, signing up to be a net controller puts us on a schedule. I politely declined. Then one evening while I was lurking on the evening southbound net I heard Lady Carolina checking to see if we were on frequency. I responded and we were able to coordinate meeting up at San Juanico. At that point, I was invested and knew I appreciated the nets being there and I wanted to grow to be more a part of the community.

I checked in to the Amigo net a few more times and then I met Jake, of Sailing Vessel Jake, in Puerto Escondido, and then I had a face for the voice of the Amigo Net manager, so shortly after that I bit the bullet and volunteered to be a net controller.

I was actually pretty nervous on my first day. We were anchored at San Nicolas, and I got up early, reviewed the preamble Jake had sent me, downloaded weather, and felt ready to go. When I finished giving the weather I checked if anyone needed weather fills and heard nothing. Then I checked for announcements, and I heard nothing. Then I glanced at the radio and was absolutely horrified. I was on the wrong frequency! My mind raced. How long had I been off frequency? When you are talking into a mike without any sort of verbal or visual feedback it’s a little unnerving, but it also means I have no idea how long I was gone. Seriously, if you know me and know how important doing a good job is to me, you know that I am not exaggerating when I say I was horrified. I switched back to the correct frequency and heard Jake finishing up the weather and then mentioning that hopefully, Deanne would be back with us soon. I broke in, asked how long I’d been missing, thanked Jake for stepping in, then tried to brush it off and continue the net without missing a beat. I think I made a joke at the end about it or something, and I’ve taken some good ribbing about it from Steve on Lady Carolina. The hardest part, really, about doing the net is holding the button on the mike down so long while reading the weather. That day I learned that the up-down arrows on the mike change the frequency channel. So while I was struggling with both hands to keep the button pushed down I must have inadvertently pushed one of those buttons. But what I really learned that day is that it didn’t matter that I screwed up. That was just a very small example of how out here everyone has everyone else’s back. Now I actually look forward to doing the net each week.

Previously, I wrote about tracking down SSB noise sources and mentioned that we still had a loud hum at the 4 MHz range. I’m happy and a little embarrassed to report we have tracked that down. It turns out that when I thought I was turning off the inverter, I was really only flipping the switch at the output of the inverter. While staring aimlessly at the electrical panel one day I actually noticed an on/off button. Not sure how I didn’t notice that before, but when I turned the inverter itself off, the hum disappeared, and listening to Gary’s weather on the Sonrisa net in the morning isn’t quite so ear-splitting.