Hi, folks.

Well, as some of you know, I've been toying around with the idea of starting 
a midwest/east coast roundtable.  This is being proposed  so that some of us 
who can't hear each other normally on the regular Sunday afternoon 
Crosscountry Blind Ops net, will be able to talk with each other on the air 
in another way.

What I'm proposing here is a lower sideband roundtable on 40 meters at 2100Z 
on Saturday afternoon.  For those of you who are a bit rusty on time 
calculations, that would be 4 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Central, etc..  I thought 
it'd be easiest to stick with the 2100Z time, since this is what we all are 
used to for the Sunday afternoon cross-country blind ops net.  I would think 
that, at 2100Z, there may still be some relatively short skip on 40 meters 
from the mid west to the east coast, and that the band may lenghten out 
enough to give us even longer workable distances.

We will need to find a frequency, and I'm thinking of something like 7.195 
MHZ.  This would be well above the new 7.175 lower limit for ssb operation 
for General class licensees, If memory serves me correctly.  It also would 
be below those pesky foreign broadcast stations.

It might be helpful for someone to do some checking, just to be sure that 
the 7.195 MHZ frequency is not occupied by some sort of regular net at that 
time.

Let me know your thoughts.  I'm open to any suggestions.

I'd like to take a shot at the roundtable this coming Saturday: January 
22nd, if that would work for others.

Could be lots of fun.

P.S. In calling this a midwest east coast roundtable, I, in no way, want to 
imply that this is limited to those in certain regions of the country.  In 
fact, nothing would please or excite me more than to have a good 
long-distance contact with someone from the other side of the country!!! 
Again, like the Sunday afternoon 2-meter cross-country blind ops net, 
everyone is welcome!

73 from Tom Behler:  KB8TYJ, Big Rapids, MI