so ive been trying to check in to what i think was a regional morning net on 80 meters, i heard about it from a guy at our club meeting a few months back but i never wrote down the frequency or the time and now i cant find anything about it online. i think it was around 3.920 or somewhere close to that, weekday mornings maybe 7am local? not sure if thats right though.

anyway i finally got my HF rig set up properly and the antenna is actually working now (long story involving a balun and my neighbor's tree) so i want to start actually getting on the air and doing something. nets seem like a good way to get comfortable on HF without just sitting there calling CQ and hearing nothing. is there a good place to look up net schedules? the ARRL net directory feels kind of outdated when i tried looking through it last week.

the ARRL net directory is honestly hit or miss, youre right about that. a lot of nets dont bother updating their listings. your best bet is probably to just ask around at the club or check if your state has an amateur radio society website — most of them keep a more current list of the nets in that area.

for 80m morning nets there's usually a bunch of them running, the frequency varies a lot by region so its hard to say without knowing where you are. if you can get close to 3.920 and just listen for a few mornings you might catch it. net controls usually ID the net pretty clearly at the start. also check out the WA7BNK net logger site, people log their check-ins there and you can sometimes figure out if a net is still active by how recent the entries are.

oh man i had the same problem when i was first getting on HF, nets are such a good way to start. i ended up just scanning around 3.900 to 3.960 on weekend mornings until i found something and then wrote everything down in a notebook like its 1985 lol. worked though. the net control on the one i found was super patient with me when i fumbled my callsign the first time checking in.