FFWN Reboot

I have been thinking about restarting the Fedi Friday Winlink Net (FFWN). I’ve got a bit more breathing room with work right now and I think it would be fun to get it going again. I’ve also been trying to check-in weekly to the Great Lakes Area Winlink Net (GLAWN) which is a much larger and very cool Winlink net. Participating in GLAWN also partially motivated me to get FFWN going again for the fedi-hams.

I’d really love some input from fedi-hams about FFWN. In the past, we basically ran this as a weekly check-in net with a question. To refresh your memory, each week’s call for check-ins was structured like this:

To check in, send your #Winlink message between 0000-2359 UTC Friday

To: FFWN
Subject: check-in

Message body line1: [callsign], [firstname], [city], [state/province/locale], [country], [mastodon username], [VHF/HF/APRS/Telnet]

Message body line2: [answer to a simple poll question determined by each week’s NCS]

Message body line3: Do you agree to have your callsign shared in the check-in list? [Y or N/opt-out]

I’d like to rethink this structure a bit with input from you all. Here are a few guiding questions to start the discussion. Please comment on this post with your input and ideas. We can also discuss on Mastodon using the #FFWN hashtag.

• Should we change (e.g., add, delete) any of the check-in information?
• Should we still have a question to respond to each week?
• Should we consider some entirely different message format?
• Do you like the idea of using built-in forms (e.g., ICS) for messages?
• Should we have multiple NCS or rotate NCS duties?

Thanks for your interest in FFWN! I am looking forward to the discussion and reboot of the net!