GAARES-P2P NET SUMMARY FOR FEB 23, 2025 (pdf is attached to the posting at gaares.groups.io and is also in the Files section there. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO gaares.groups.io as things there are much more readable.)
Thanks to Kory W4RZ for running the net today. Please see Kory’s great postings he made today during and after the net closed. He makes some great points about everyone knowing how to determine “Is the frequency in use?”. If you can hear one side of the exchange, even if it is the short one-second ACK bursts, the frequency is in use and do not call. Also, use the Monitor feature in the Vara TNC (menu at top Monitor). We have said it before. Data transfer will come to a complete halt when stations are calling on top of an existing connection. When this happens, it is a disservice to everyone.
NET SUMMARY:
Kory drafted P2P ACK messages for everyone today and quite a few came back to pick their message up. Great practice. All participants were mapped except the four stations that used “Grid Square” location (which was contrary to net instructions). I will be reaching out to those individuals and offer some individual training to see if we can fix this. If you are going to participate in Emcomm with Winlink, you must know how to put accurate coordinates into messages.
For those mapped, click on your station to see how your check-in message and location rated. If you would like to get feedback on specifics of your message, just email me directly to [email protected] and I’ll be happy to provide details for your message(s) in a private email.
FEB 23 NET STATISTICS:
Callsigns checking in today: 43
Check-in msgs – 80m: 27 (including 1 dupe on 80m)
Check-in msgs – 40m: 29
Check-ins with no band listed: 1
Total Check-in msgs: 57
Callsigns that checked in both sessions: 17
Message Analysis:
Callsigns that submitted a completely correct message: 39 of 43 (91%)
Callsigns using wrong report type: none!
Callsigns with message dated before current day: none!
Callsigns using Grid Square: 4 (not mapped)
MSGs that used WG4PTP instead of GAARES-P2P 1 (He caught his error and checked in again with it corrected)
Callsigns with Lat/Lon errors: none – Great!
Why so rigid about the message formats:
Crunching data each week is very time consuming when the message format is not perfect. Please check your message data on the map this week for small errors. Things like: ; instead of , two names, county with Co added, anything not as instructions say causes me a lot of extra time when I try to separate columns in Excel. Thanks much! Besides, we are practicing for actual Emcomm situations, where serving agencies can be very picky about how they want messages formatted.
GAARES-P2P NET MAP LINK for 2025-02-16:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=12njDPAVMKGFqZNuufs2bsm31FXoc7Pg&usp=sharing
ORANGE SQUARE ICONS – 80M CKINS
PURPLE DIAMOND ICONS – 40M CKINGS
RED CHECK – NCS WG4PTP (KORY W4RZ)
This week’s map has both 80m and 40m check-ins combined. To find your info, click on the down caret left of “All Items” in each of the 80m & 40m map layers at left side of map for a dropdown of each station. Click on your callsign for each band to see how you did. LET ME KNOW IF YOU PREFER SEPARATE MAPS FOR 80M & 40M. No one got back to me last week with preferences.
FUN QUESTION OF THE WEEK:
You want to send the same P2P message to 5 different stations. Your Outbox is currently empty. You draft the message and, in the “To” box, enter all five callsigns, each separated by a semicolon. Next, you set the message as “Send as” Peer-to-Peer Message. Finally, you click “Post to Outbox”. How many messages are now in the Outbox?
A. One message addressed to all five callsigns with (P2P) after the last callsign
B. Five messages, each addressed to one of the callsigns
C. One message addressed to all five callsigns and (P2P) after each callsign
D. Five messages, each addressed to one of the callsigns with (P2P) following the callsign.
E. 25 messages, 5 to each callsign: 5 without p2p, 5 with p2p, 5 with both, 5 with nothing, and 5 left in the draft. (Choice E was suggested by NCS Op W4RZ)
ANSWER: Fellow net participants, if you did not know the answer to this question, it would have taken you less than 60 seconds to try it in Winlink Express and see verify the answer. Next week, we will go through this again with some screenshots because it’s a really a basic P2P situation that’s important to understand. It is not uncommon to want to generate a P2P message to several callsigns, particular for nets with several NCSs like FL WL NET or WLW.
A. Incorrect because a P2P message can have only one addressee
B. This message is a good answer but it is not the BEST answer of the four. Instructions said it was open book question and to select the best answer.
C. Incorrect: Same reason as in A.
D. Correct: Perform the sequence of steps in the question. You will have 5 different messages, all identical except for the addressee. Each of them will be P2P and you will know that because (P2P) will be after the addressee on each message. The (P2P) is the only way to confirm that a message is indeed a Peer-to-Peer message. If it isn’t, it will not be sent.
QUIZ RESULTS:
Answers reported in check-in messages today are below. If you sent more than one check-in message, we counted your answer only once. If you submitted messages with different answers, we took the answer in your final message.
A 1
B 10
C 6
D 24 (59%)
E 0
Total callsigns that gave an answer: 41
Callsigns that did not give an answer: 2
Thanks to EVERYONE for participating. If you have any questions about P2P, please send them to me. I may be able to incorporate them into a weekly training session.
See you next week & 73,
David – ND1J
GAARES P2P Net Manager