It was apparent right off the bat that

someone or something was not working

correctly. Matthew's report to me was

that he could barely hear me. His signal

also was scratchy. I quickly checked my

SWR – it was normal.  I increased to

high power, SWR still normal but

check-ins, few as they were, were all

scratchy/noisy.  AE0AL and N2PSR

indicated they could both hear me on

the repeater input frequency of

146.070 MHz.  Decided to switch net

operations to simplex on the repeater

input frequency.  Making frequent

announcements of change in net

operations, proceeded with the net

via simplex.  Three total check-ins,

including first-time participant NØMAG. 

Welcome Rick!

Bottom line:  Stuff happens and we

all need to think about potential failures

and how we can compensate.  I am

now re-programming most of my radios

to add simplex ops on the repeater input

frequency in an adjacent memory for

any repeaters I use for net ops. With

most radios manufactured since about

1985, there are loads of free memories

so this isn't an issue.  And it only takes

about ten minutes if you use Chirp or

manufacturer-supplied memory

programming software.