so ive been getting into nets lately, started checking into the local 2m club net on tuesday nights and honestly its become kind of a ritual now. grab a coffee, fire up the 706, call in my check-in and just listen for a bit. nothing fancy but there's something really satisfying about it especially when the net control is someone who really knows how to run things smoothly.

got curious though and started looking into some of the HF nets. found a few on 40m that run in the evenings and the propagation has been pretty decent lately so ive been able to hit a couple of them from here in the midwest. the OMISS net has been fun, picked up a few states i needed for that too which was a nice bonus.

also noticed there's a special event station coming up next weekend for some kind of anniversary, saw it on the ARRL site. W1AW/5 or something like that. anyone been chasing those? i grabbed a few last year during the portable ops event but never really went hard after the special event ones. wondering if its worth setting up early or if the pileups die down quick.

anyway just curious who else makes nets a regular thing and if theres any good ones i should know about that dont show up in the obvious places

nets are great man, i've been doing the morning 75m net for probably 8 years now and it's just part of the morning routine at this point. coffee and ragchew, basically. the guys on there are a mix of retired fellas and a few younger operators and the net control rotates so everyone gets a chance which keeps it from getting stale.

for special event stations yeah the pileups can be rough right when they first come on but if you wait a couple hours or catch them toward the end of their operating window sometimes its way easier to work them. i've found late sunday afternoons on SSB are often pretty clear compared to saturday morning when everyone's fresh and excited. also check their operating schedule carefully because a lot of the special event guys post specific frequencies and times and if you know exactly when they're coming on 20m vs 40m you can just be there waiting instead of hunting around.

the ARRL special event page is decent but honestly the DX bulletins sometimes have better info on timing

oh this is exactly what im trying to figure out right now actually. just got my general last month and ive been lurking on 40m trying to figure out the nets. i heard about the traffic nets but honestly the procedure sounds intimidating, like i dont want to mess up someone's radiogram or whatever. do the casual nets have any kind of formal check-in thing or can you just say your callsign and thats it