Communications Exercise (COMEX) 19-4

[Josh]

From the ARRL Bulletin:



During October and corresponding with the ARRL Simulated Emergency Test (SET), Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) members will be reaching out to the amateur radio community to continue building working relationships and improving interoperability. As part of this effort, MARS will be promoting the use of a serial phase-shift keying protocol, Military Standard 188-110 (M110), on the 60-meter interoperability channels. Radio amateurs are authorized to use this digital mode on the five 60-meter interop channels, although M110 exceeds the allowable symbol rate that radio amateurs may use on all other HF bands.

Starting on November 2 and continuing until November 17, the MARS community will be executing Department of Defense (DOD) Communications Exercise (COMEX) 19-4. MARS members will use the exercise to continue training and refining their operator skills to provide situational awareness information, such as county status reports and weather observations.

To announce the kickoff of the exercise, WWV and WWVH will broadcast voice announcements starting on or about October 31. WWV will transmit the announcements at 10 minutes past the hour, while WWVH will transmit them at 10 minutes before the hour.

The communication exercise will culminate on the evening of November 16 with military stations sending M110 messages to the amateur community on 60-meter channel 1 (5330.5 kHz USB).







This will give us the chance to suss out them MARS freqs.

[Josh]

Some notes on comex and so forth;

Most activity will be on well known MARS freqs such as 4025, 13963.5 and so on. Otherwise look for MARS traffic above and below any HAM band, upper bands days, lower bands nites of course. A huge amount of MARS activity takes place just above 80m in the range 4003 to around 4050 mornings and eves, in USB voice. They will also use 110A, try asynch if synch doesn't work, 8n1 framing, ITA2 alphabet, and they will send encrypted groups at times but the headers will be legible. ARMY and USAF MARS will be active, USN/MC MARS doesn't exist anymore, sadly.

de NNN0BOC