Radio Etiquette

“You” this is “Me”

The proper way to begin a transmission is to announce the call sign of the person you are attempting to contact followed by stating your own call sign.

Call Sign Use

Once a conversation has been started you need not use your call sign, but can carry on a plain talk conversation. By regulation, it is only required that you announce your call sign upon initiating the conversation, once every 15 minutes in a prolonged conversation, and to announce it upon ending the conversation.

Ending Conversation

You may let the network know you have completed your conversation by stating your callsign and stating the word “out” (this will indicate you do not expect to recieve a response). Alternatively, if you are just completing your current thought and expecting a response, you may end your transmission with "over".

Negative Contact

When communicating on simplex channels, if you are engaged in a conversation and the signal becomes weak, it will be standard protocal to attempt to initiate contact 3 times on the last channel. After 3 failed attempts, move to channel 6, retry 3 attempts, then move to channell 16, make 3 attempts, then move to channel 24. 

Radio Programming

The radios are programmed to use privacy codes on simplex (radio to radio) club channels 4,5,6,7,8, 16, and repeater channels 24 (radio to repeater then back to radio).

Green - Repeater (Primary Contact)

Yellow -High Power Channels (Long Range Contact)

Orange- Mid/Low power channels (Short Range Contact)

Privacy Codes (Club Channels)

Each channel on the radio is a specific frequency. Privacy codes do not change the frequency or in anyway obscure the transmission. Privacy codes aren’t really privacy. These codes tell the radio speaker to ignore anyone transmitting on this frequency unless they are transmitting the appropriate privacy code. (These are the sub channels you see on family FRS radios). So, anyone that is just on that frequency without a privacy code set will hear all transmissions on that frequency. So privacy codes do not prevent other people from hearing you, they prevent you from hearing other people. kdio club has set privacy codes on select channels to facilitate communication between members without interference from others, not to make the transmissions private.