Re: MARS (OT, not K3)

[Mike Morrow-3]

Thom wrote:

>I remember trying to find out what frequencies the various MARS programs used in
>order to determine if I could use the K2 to checkit.  My emails explained why I
>was asking.
>
>Army Mars never answered...
>
>AirForce Mars told me they couldn't give me the frequencies
>due to security.
>
>Navy MARS not only wouldn't give me the information...
>
>It's hard to know if the radio you purchase will operate on the secret
>frequencies that you can't learn cause you're not a member and you can't join
>cause you don't know if your rig will operate where no one can tell you it
>should.

To become a Navy-Marine Corps MARS member in 1968 was *the* thing that finally motivated me, after years of non-licensed radio tinkering, to get my ham ticket.  MARS in the Viet-Nam War era, long before cell phones, e-mail, and internet revolutionized contacts between the serviceman and his stateside friends and family, handled large amounts of such text and phone patch traffic for the serviceman.  For a traffic-handling radio operator, the MARS Morse nets of that time were excellent.  And while no one I knew joined MARS just because of the surplus military radio equipment issue program, that was an additional small perk.  I was 14 years in Navy MARS (N0LTD), then five years in Army MARS (AAT6UI).

Today almost all MARS activity is administrative or training in nature.  Serviceman traffic is almost non-existent.  The present purpose claimed for MARS communications is its potential use in emergencies.  Morse activity has been positively and absolutely prohibited, even to the extent of removing it from VHF repeater IDs...it is not tolerated even for training purposes.  The equipment issue program is long gone.

MARS frequencies have never been classified.  Not releasing these frequencies seems almost an attempt at attaching a secretive members-only aura to MARS communications.  The radio network run by the CAP does similarly.  "Frequency designators" are to be used in on-air exchanges rather than explicitly stating the actual frequency.  This is silly to those who have any familiarity with these quasi-military networks, and real military communcation networks.  When I was active in MARS, we would write down the frequencies we used for local area nets on the MARS flyers that we passed out at hamfests.  We wanted people to listen, and perhaps decide to join!  But not today, post 9/11, even though our current adversaries could do much less with such information than could our former Cold War adversaries.  (There were some reports 40 years ago of anti-war types jamming MARS Vietnam serviceman phone patches.)

For what it's worth, the most commonly-used Army and Navy-Marine Corps MARS frequencies are within 100 kHz above the 80m and 40m ham bands.  Air Force and CAP frequencies have always been a bit more taxing, with commonly used frequencies several hundred kHz above the 80m and 40m bands.  Most regular evening area nets take place between 1800 and 2100 local time.  The Navy, Air Force, and CAP use USB exclusively, while the Army still conducts some nets in either USB or LSB.

Most HF ham equipment for the past 25 years has been easily modified for general coverage transmit.  The only real problem for a potential MARS member is coming up with a suitable antenna for any oddball MARS frequencies that are assigned to his area.

73,
Mike / KK5F
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