so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about checking into nets but honestly i havent really done it yet. i get a little nervous about it which is dumb i know. i did a quick search on the ARRL site and found a few but the schedules are kind of confusing and i dont know which ones are actually active vs just listed there and never updated.

my setup is pretty basic — a baofeng and a home base with a 2m/70cm dual band. i also have HF capability now with an IC-7300 but i haven't really used it on the air much yet. i live in the midwest so i figure there have to be some good regional nets i could join on a weeknight when i have time after work. anyone have a go-to net they check into regularly that they'd recommend for someone still kinda finding their feet?

also totally separate question — is there like a good resource for special event stations? i saw something about a park activiation thing and it looked cool but i missed it and dont know how to find out about those ahead of time

welcome to the addiction haha. dont be nervous about checking in, net control has heard it all and honestly most of them love having new folks join. the first time i checked in i totally fumbled my callsign exchange and the NC just calmly asked me to repeat and we moved on, no big deal at all.

for weeknight nets on HF you might want to look at the 75m and 40m ragchew nets — there are tons of them. the OMISS net is a good one for working states if you're into that. on the local/regional side your best bet is honestly just to ask your local club or check into your regional repeater and ask if anyone knows whats active in your area. net directories go stale fast and half of them haven't been updated since like 2015.

for special event stations, the ARRL has a special event station lookup page that's actually kept pretty current, and the QRZ calendar is decent too. if you're into the parks stuff specifically look up POTA — parksontheair.org — there's a whole activations calendar and a spotting page and its honestly super fun to hunt activators on a lunch break or whatever. some weekends theres like 80 or 90 active activations going on at once.

yeah the ARRL net directory is kind of hit or miss tbh. i found a net listed there a while back, tuned in for like three weeks in a row and heard nothing. turns out they'd moved frequencies and nobody updated the listing.

the POTA thing the other person mentioned is great, i got into that last summer and its kind of addictive. you can even check into some of those activations if the activator sets up a contact logging session and you're hunting them — counts as a park contact on your log. not exactly a net but its a similar kind of regular on-air activity thing. just throwing it out there since you mentioned special events