"Gary Schafer" wrote
"Jack Painter"
wrote:

100% of the traffic was a waste of bandwidth with
stations checking in from their homes with no traffic (This is still not
quite as ridiculous as someone checking in to the MMSN with no traffic
from
their BOAT).

Jack,

I hate to pick on you again but you are totally wrong about the
"uselessness" of hams checking in with no traffic.

I generally despise most nets that operate on the ham bands. But ones
like the mmsn serve a real purpose. They do not get called upon often
for "real" service but all those check ins serve to keep the interest
in members and practice the skills a little.

Without any of those "no traffic" check ins those nets would not
exist.
Not only that no one would even know that they existed.

As far as guys checking in from their boat with no traffic that again
reinforces the operation of the net. It is also a good way for that
boater to know that he can contact the net when needed. It provides
him with a little training in communication skills also.
Does anyone get that kind of training or acknowledgement from the
Coast Guard? I think not. Practice is what makes this thing work.

73
Gary K4FMX

Hi Gary, that's all right. I was talking about an MMSN member checking in
with the net from the dock. If that's training, so be it. I don't know if
there are ever missed calls because of that chatter, but it seems possible
there would be. Training with check-in chatter could be accomplished
off-net, much like the Sunday afternoon training already goes off-frequency
for a short broadcast of interest to users of the net. Many Hams are
admittedly very skilled with break-in techniques that keep the MMSN full of
non-stop chatter with few breaks for service, so to speak. Just my
observation from over a decade of listening to it!

Jack