so ive been doing the local 2m club net on monday nights for a while now and its fine but honestly gets a little repetitive, same 6 people checking in every week. started poking around for other nets to join just to hear more activity and practice my HF operating a bit more.

found a couple 40m nets that run tuesday evenings around 7-8pm local but i dont always catch them because the skip is weird or im just late getting to the shack. wondering if anyone here has nets they really like and check in to regularly, doesnt matter what band really. also curious about those special event stations, i saw something about a lighthouse weekend coming up and have no idea how that works or if you just call them like any other station.

still relatively new so any pointers appreciated, been licensed about 8 months now

lighthouse weekend is a blast, you basically just tune around and work as many of the lighthouse special event stations as you can, they're usually running from actual lighthouse locations with portable setups. some of them are just regular hams doing a special event callsign for the weekend. you can find the list of participating lighthouses on the ILLW website ahead of time which helps a lot for planning.

for nets on 40m, the traffic nets are really good practice if you want something with a bit more structure. ARRL has a net directory on their site that lets you search by band and time which i use all the time when im traveling and want to find something local. the NTS nets run pretty much like clockwork so you always know what youre getting. my personal favorite is just finding a ragchew net honestly, way more relaxed than a formal traffic net and you actually get to have a conversation instead of just giving your call and signal report and disappearing.

yeah the ARRL net directory is where i'd start, been using it since i got my ticket last year. i found a couple nets through there that i check in to pretty regularly now. one thing i noticed is a lot of nets have a net control who posts a schedule reminder on their club facebook page or reflector so its worth hunting those down once you find a net you like, easier than trying to remember the time every week