> It's hard to use a system in an emergency if you're not used to using it in general. This is why you will hear the Hospital Net on the the N6NFI repeater eve

> It's hard to use a system in an emergency if you're not used to using it in general. This is why you will hear the Hospital Net on the the N6NFI repeater every month. Here's the Net Control Operator script: https://www.scc-ares-races.org/hospital/docs/HospitalNetScript_v190121a.pdf https://www.scc-ares-races.org/hospital/docs/HospitalNetScri... If you listen to the net some night, you might hear operators checking in from each hospital saying "No traffic, we sent a packet." Which sounds pretty boring, but confirms two things: the ham radio station at that hospital has successfully completed a voice communication (obviously, because they are talking with Net Control), and they have also successfully sent a message to a designated packet radio address and had it confirmed. That's about as uninteresting as it gets, until the real emergency happens and everyone is glad you've been practicing this every month. It's also why, when you see a comment on https://www.reddit.com/r/Baofeng/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Baofeng/ saying "I want to get one of these cheap handhelds for emergency communication, I know I'm not allowed to transmit unless it's a real emergency, but I can listen in the meantime and then I will have the radio on hand just in case," there will always be replies like "Get your Technician license! It's not that hard - many people study for half a day or less - and then you can practice transmitting on the ham bands, so you know you will be able to operate the radio."