I have a calendar of all of the local nets that I’m aware of or might be interested in checking in on, and one of those was the 25-25 Net. They meet on Wednesdays at 8 pm on 144.230 MHz USB for check ins and some Bay Area ragchewing. I always thought the net sounded interesting, just never got around to checking in before.

This evening Ellen and Daria were not home yet and about 15 minutes before the net was due to start I decided I might as well try it out. I haven’t been doing a whole lot with radio other than local 2M/440 repeaters, so it would be worth trying something new.

I quickly pulled my Diamond X30A down off of my home fiberglass mast, and grabbed one of my shorter masts, threw those in a backpack with some antenna cable and my Yaesu FT-817, got a leash on the dog and hopped in the car. Headed up to the top of Mount Hermon and tried to throw all the pieces together quickly while monitoring the net with my HT.

By the time I got it all set, tuned, and finally working on USB they were through with check-ins and on to the ragchew portion. So I waiting until I heard a break and got my call out there. Rich (KE1B) was kind enough to handle the relay for me. I could just barely pull out net control (KI6BEN in Fremont) but could hear most of the other people on the net pretty well. I was putting out somewhat less than 5 watts so I wasn’t surprised one bit that he couldn’t hear me direct :-)

If you find you’ve been doing the “same ole thing” on radio and haven’t done anything new, there is plenty out there you can try! CW? APRS? Echolink/IRLP? Give them a try!