They're here!!
With the advent of amateur pagers, which many of us now own, it is now possible to send various alerts to fellow amateurs either individually or as a group. Now we can send local alerts, net alerts, Canwarn alerts, ARES alerts, and personal alerts to individual pagers or to groups of pagers.
With this new facet of amateur radio some standards of operation need to be established. At the March 4th coffee meeting of the MARC at the Minden Legion it was generally agreed to return VA3MIN club business to the VA3MIN repeater and to set our new pagers to monitor this channel. The VA3MIN repeater, as you may already know, has been moved to its new home in Eagle Lake and the problem with the squelch has been resolved. Many thanks to Tom VE3UFL for the temporary/interim accommodation at his place on South Lake over the last little while. Look for the club nets to continue on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. local time now on VA3MIN.
Ed Note: Until receive sensitivity issue with VA3MIN is resolved, please use VA3HAL 147.345+ as primary pager repeater.
A list of club members now equipped with pagers has been compiled and these units are coming on line as their new owners find the time to program them and set them up with a dedicated 2 metre receiver. Below is a list of the alerts available for activation on each pager, along with the DTMF code sequence for their activation. Private ID numbers are published on the VA3MIN website. (Don't forget there are a total of 10 personal IDs available to each of us on these new pagers, so don't be shy about having yours published. Besides, it's a very simple matter to reprogram a new ID should this become necessary or desirable).
� Local Alert - ###0 (This will alert any pager listening on VA3MIN that has solid enough reception to decode the incoming DTMF tones).
� Personal Alert - ###1XXX (XXX is your personal 3 digit ID number based on your machine's serial number on the back of the pager. Please program your pager's serial number, located on the bottom of your pager, as your main published personal ID number).
� Net Alert - ###2 (This will alert any pager monitoring VA3MIN).
� ARES Alert - RRR3 (Only ARES personnel have this DTMF sequence)
� Canwarn Alert - RRR4 (Only Canwarn personnel have this DTMF sequence)
With each alert sent is the opportunity to record up to a 15 second voice message. Remember though, subsequent messages overwrite previous unretreived messages.
Local pager personal IDs are as follows;
MARC Pager Directory |
||
| Call Sign | Name | Code |
| VA3LGF | Len | 009 |
| VE3APL | Phil | 016 |
| VE3BLT | Tim | 013 |
| VE3BWC | Brendan | 014 |
| VE3ERN | Ernie | 008 |
| VE3MRJ | Bob | 010 |
| VE3PZS | Tom | 011 |
| VE3UFL | Tom | 012 |
| VE3VHH | Wally | 017 |
| VE3WHG | Carolyn | 112 |
Ed note: I've organized the directory by call sign. I have also included an RTF file of the directory HERE for download (RTF or Rich Text Format will open in any word processing software). VE3BLT
In terms of general operation protocol for pagers, net controllers may wish to bring up the VE3LNZ link prior to the VA3MIN net or any alert involving our brethren in Victoria County. It is otherwise necessary to ensure that VA3MIN is not linked prior to sending a local alert so one does not activate out-of-area pagers unnecessarily.
Use of the pager should be similar to that for a phone patch. Firstly, identify yourself (call sign) "for the pager" followed by the DTMF tones which will activate the pager(s) feature you are accessing. Secondly, identify yourself once more at this point so the amateur you are paging will know who has called when retrieving your voice message later (i.e. the pager recorder does not activate until you have already identified and sent the DTMF codes initially).
Sounds like you want a pager? I'm not surprised. Contact a club member.
VE3BWC