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The Department of Defense will host this year’s Armed Forces Day (AFD) Crossband Test on May 9, 2026. This annual event is open to all licensed amateur radio operators and will not impact any public or private communications. For more than 50 years, military and amateur stations have taken part in this event, which is an interoperability exercise between amateur and government radio stations.

The AFD Crossband Test is a unique opportunity to test two-way communication between military communicators and radio amateurs as authorized in 47 CFR 97.111. These tests provide opportunities and challenges for radio operators to demonstrate individual technical skills in a tightly controlled exercise scenario.

Military stations will transmit on selected military frequencies and will announce the specific amateur radio frequencies monitored. All times are in UTC and all frequencies are upper sideband (USB) unless otherwise noted.

An AFD message will be transmitted with the Military Standard (MIL-STD) Serial PSK waveform (M110) followed by MIL-STD Wide Shift FSK (850 Hz RTTY) as described in MILSTD 188-110A/B. Technical information.

The AFD Defense Message will be sent at 1400Z and 2000Z on the frequencies designated as follows:

MIL-STD-110/RTTY 13,963.5 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110 14,438.5 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110 14,484.0 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110 14,512.5 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110 14,463.5 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110 20,994.0 kHz USB

CW 14,375.0 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110/RTTY/CW 14,476.0 kHz USB

MIL-STD-110/RTTY/CW 14,383.5 kHz USB

QSL cards and other information are available via the Army MARS (Military Auxiliary Radio System) website.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has responded to a complaint involving a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, amateur for operating outside the privileges of his Technician Class license and causing interference to local emergency service communications by transmitting on a public service frequency, 470.4375 MHz.

According to a letter released by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, agents investigating an interference complaint from Allegheny County Emergency Services determined that the interfering signal originated from the residence of David Knudtson, KD3ASC, who also holds a General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) license, WSDQ885. The letter states that Knudtson gave the agents a BTech UV-Pro handheld which had been programmed to monitor the county emergency services frequency. Agents determined that its “Audio Relay” feature had been activated, turning the HT “into a simplex repeater that was retransmitting the Allegheny County channel.”

The letter continues that Knudtson, who is a relatively new amateur licensee, surrendered the radio to the agents, who then “verified that the interference to the Allegheny County system had ceased.” The letter also notes that Knudtson’s BTech radio was certified as a Part 90 (private land mobile radio) device and that he was not licensed to transmit on the emergency services frequency.

Knudtson was warned that unauthorized operation and its associated harmful interference must not resume. He was given 10 days from the date of the March 25 letter to respond with a description of the steps he is taking to avoid a repeat violation.

Amateurs are reminded to exercise care when programming non-amateur frequencies into their VHF/UHF radios, and to ensure that transmitting on those frequencies is disabled.

It doesn’t help a whole lot if you attempt to get on the air, and nobody hears you. Even if I have the very best equipment that money can buy, including a great antenna, and even though I feel certain everybody this side of Richland county can hear me, it’s still possible that they can’t. If you’re talking on simplex, your antenna could be oriented incorrectly, you might have a loose or corroded connection, you might not be speaking close enough to the microphone, or your battery is on its last breath.

If you’re trying to talk through a repeater, maybe your tone or offset isn’t set, maybe you are too far from the repeater to hold it open for proper communication, or maybe you have bumped the button, and you’re a little off-frequency, or maybe you just need to get out of the basement.

When you need to get on the air, especially in a hurry, it seems there are a number of obstacles that could hinder your otherwise perfect transmission. For that reason, one of the first things you should do before a net or a drill is to request a signal report. Maybe say:

This is W8ABC. Could I please get a signal report? and you’ll likely find one or more listening hams who’ll be happy to help you out by telling you how you sound.

You’re typically looking for three things as feedback to your transmission:

• The quality of your sound
• Your loudness
• And whether your audio is accompanied by any hiss or other noise.

A responding operator who can report these three sound properties is probably the most helpful. By the same token, you can offer the most help by reporting these same three qualities to people who are asking for a report.

On the other hand, those who say, “You sound fine” mean well, but might be just a bit too brief, and don’t give you a lot to go on, although it’s still kind of them to try and give you some sort of feedback. The brief exception is when a ham operator simply reports, “You’re coming in perfectly!” which, in a nutshell, means crystal clear audio, loud audio, and no perceptible background noise.

Once you do this, you’re relatively confident that the rest of your transmissions could easily be heard by those who need to hear them. Even after that, your signal or audio could still become less-than-perfect if you’re moving around, changing your antenna direction, or your battery starts failing. But, at least you’ve taken that initial step to ensure a smoothly running net or drill.

Just about every modern ham radio has two operating modes: Memory (also known as Channel) mode and VFO (also known as Frequency) mode. Memory or Channel mode is merely a set of memory channels that have a number of frequencies stored in them, along with the appropriate settings for each, such as offset, tone, and power level. You select each by simply scrolling through the stored channels. VFO or Frequency mode, however, doesn’t quite work the same way, and it’s often convenient to understand how to work it.

VFO stands for variable-frequency oscillator, which simply means that this mode will allow you to set your radio to almost any arbitrary frequency and other parameters needed for any desired type of operation on that frequency. That’s useful for manually tuning to a frequency, setting the parameters, and testing it before you commit it to a memory channel. Even though VFO mode is a kind of *scratch pad* location to get a frequency set up, most radios will preserve those settings in VFO, so that, after you turn off your radio, and then power it up again later, all the information you put into VFO will still be there.

Here are some of the parameters that can be set for a particular frequency:

• repeater offset
• repeater shift direction, such as plus, minus, or off
• ARS, which stands for automatic repeater shift, when it’s on, will automatically set your frequency offset and shift direction for *standard* repeater frequencies
• tone mode, such as TONE, TSQL, CSQ, DCS, and CTCSS
• tone frequency
• power level
• squelch level
• bandwidth, meaning wide or narrow
• Also, for HF radios:
• signal mode, such as AM, FM, LSB, USB, CW, and RTTY
• split, to indicate different transmit and receive frequencies

A number of other settings can be saved in memory, some can’t, depending on the radio model, but these are among the important ones.

As you can see, it might be difficult to remember all of the necessary settings, so it’ll take a little time and practice on your part, to manually set up your VFO set correctly for a given frequency on your particular radio. Once you get it set up right, you can then store the frequency and all the details in a memory channel, so that you can retrieve it later in Memory or Channel mode.

It’s helpful to know how to manipulate and program your VFO when you need to, without needing to rely on a manual or another person. Yes, it’s one more thing to learn, about amateur radio, but can be convenient, so that you’re not always dependent on somebody else to program your radio for you, especially when you’re not near a computer.