March 2026 Newsletter

News:

  • Winlink will be a 9 AM to 9 PM event on Mondays. Hopefully this gives everyone more time to practice.
  • JS8call will be on Thursday at 8 PM weekly.
  • I'm planning on expanding our list to include neighboring states nets, if they are onboard with the additional traffic.
  • Got to talk to someone who worked an emergency. Nothing "life or death" as they put it, but passing along the status of students impacted. I reminded them that to the parents, nothing was more valuable and realized we talk about getting supplies for shelters, or handling emergency traffic, but very little discussion is made about welfare checks. If you ever need a primer on that, talk to anyone who had family in Puerto Rico during any storm. It was the ham operators who let them know the status of their loved ones.

RACES News

There were storms in Hawai, you can read the full story in the ARRL letter for 2/19 but I wanted to include this quote.
“It was encouraging to work alongside such engaged and supportive leadership from the department management,” said Deputy RACES Program Coordinator Michael Miller, KH6ML. “Their awareness of our role in a larger grey or black sky event ensures the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) remains fully integrated into emergency operations.”

RACES, from my perspective, is like a license grant. Just like there are limits in the bands you can operate given your ham license, you cannot talk to other RACES stations without meeting that requirement. Not all stations my be operating in a way to require it, that would be up to the federal goverment to decide. The law simply states a requirement that you be recognized by a civil defense authority. In some states, that is now being done at the county rather than the state level. Any local emergency management organization would seem to qualify as that authority, however, Vermont seems to only have committees. A local agency, for example a town government, should fit that definition. More research is needed to make that determination, however, as it came up at Ham-Con, I wanted to pass it along. MA RACES works in a mode I will see if we can emulate, although as I stated earlier, we may have to stick to a more local level.

RACES in MA: visit their RACES page to see their monthly event and to learn about how MA is handling RACES (not on the state level but regionally). I will get this added to our calendar in a new section about neighboring activity. Please note 2 differences from the posted information. For the 80M voice: 3942 KHz working up or down until the first free frequency. They are also looking at APRS: "Experimental APRS net Send an APRS message, between 0600 Monday Mar 2 and 2400 Monday Mar 2. To: ANSRVR Contents: CQ MAARES any check in message"

Memorandum of Understandings

Rather than linking direcly, you can go to ARRL to view all of the agencies served and our responsibilites in those agreements (including with DHS/FEMA).

February recap

Week Monday SOVARC ARES Net Tuesday DMR ARES Net Tuesday NFMRA ARES Net Wednesday Digital Practice Net
2026-02-02 0 12 11 8
2026-02-09 0 14 8 7
2026-02-16 4 9 1 0
2026-02-23 0 15 9 6

Zeroes can indicate there was no net or no report of participation.

Monthly

2 m Chittenden County Simplex
2/17/2026 7

Community:

2,238 strong
13 Novice
1,039 Technicians
558 General class
102 Advanced class
526 Amateur Extra class

Helpful Links

Map of NEDECN and NFMRA Repeaters QRZ
APRS Propagation
ARRL More details

each link opens in a new page

Net Schedules
ARES nets are marked

Sunday night
8:00 AM ARES Vermont Emergency Phone Net* 3.976 MHz
8:00 PM SOVARC 10 meter USB phone 28.333 MHz
Monday night
7:00 PM ARES SOVARC Bennington Repeater* 146.835 PL 100 (Echolink K1SV-R).
SOVARC Club Net follows the formal net.
7:50 PM ARES WRCC club net 146.865 PL 100
Tuesday night
7:00-7:30 PM ARES UHF Linked system (NFMRA)*
8:00-8:30 PM ARES DMR TG3150 VT Statewide (NEDECN)*
Wednesday night
7:00 PM Digital Practice Net FLDIGI
THOR22 on 3.570Mhz offset: 1500hz
Monthly
3/23/2026
7:00 PM		 2m Chittenden County Simplex 146.55

* denotes a directed net

ARES nets are dedigned as practice for RACES operations as well.

Your monthly recap of Vermont ARES information.