Guidelines and Suggestions

Guidelines and Suggestions

We need your help in keeping America’s Kansas City Wide Network Healthy.

We welcome you to America’s Kansas City Wide. We appreciate getting the opportunity to talk with you on KC-Wide and thank you for joining our group.

To continue to make KC-Wide a wonderful place to hang out, we have some rules or code of conduct.

Our goal is to be welcoming, open, and friendly to all licensed amateur radio operators. Please help us promote good amateur radio practice.

Guidelines:

Length of conversations; Please keep your conversations shorter rather than longer when possible. There are slow times when ragchewing is great, and busy times when it is not helpful in allowing others to talk. Please use good judgement.

There are a lot of people using KC-Wide. Please share and don’t hog the network. Your help in being considerate is very much appreciated. This is an exceptionally large party line system.

Subjects of conversation; KC-Wide is a family friendly worldwide network. Controversial subjects like religion, politics, world wars, and etc. normally need to be avoided.

Our goal is to connect good people together and make friends, not enemies. Please understand that we host people from all over the world with different cultures and different opinions on a given subject. Not all amateur radio operators share your opinions. Please be tolerant of others.

Please understand that not everyone is as smart, as professional, or as much an expert as you. Act positively, how can I help, how can I teach, rather than being negative or insulting.

Rules:

Nobody likes rules, and we’d rather not spell these out. Unfortunately, history shows that they are necessary. Repeated or egregious disregard will result in your being blocked from the network.

We encourage you to talk about your profession and hobbies, but you cannot advertise your business. Advertising, promoting personal agendas, or using KC-Wide as a soapbox is not acceptable.

Using rude language, abusive words, insults, or obscenity on the network is illegal per the FCC and other worldwide regulatory agencies.

Derogatory remarks directed at any group (ethnic, religious, racial, sexual, etc.) are not acceptable, even/especially in the form of a joke.

Ham radio is a wonderful place for people to experiment with. We encourage that but please do not experiment on KC-Wide. We have lots of users that enjoy the system and do not enjoy problems, crazy noises, or outages due to someone testing out their new device. NEVER link KC-Wide to other networks, and be especially careful if you have multiple hotspots in your shack.

KC-Wide is an English-speaking network. Most of our users only speak English. For us to enjoy your conversation please speak in English.

The last thing we want to do is block anyone from the room but will do so to protect the network. There are a few things that may require us to block you from using our network:

  • Repeated disregard of the rules,
  • Attempts to change rooms on KC-Wide owned repeaters,
  • No or invalid callsign programmed into your Fusion radio,
  • Stuck microphones transmitting dead air,
  • Over-driven or heavily distorted audio,
  • Loops (multiple links to KC-Wide),
  • Unauthorized links to other networks,
  • Anything else that disrupts the use of KC-Wide by others.

You will get a warning or be notified of being blocked if we can find an email for you in QRZ. If not we will block your use of the network until we hear from you. If that happens you can contact us at feedback@kansascitywide.com. Give us your callsign and EXACT time that you tried to connect, and one of our volunteers will investigate and get back to you. Let us know your plan to resolve the problem, and we’ll restore access as quickly as possible.

We have lots of volunteers working hard to make KC-Wide a useful resource for ham radio. Sometimes things break, the Internet is troublesome, or other users accidentally disrupt the network. We are sorry, but those things happen. We try our best to eliminate problems as best we can, but we cannot guarantee that KC-Wide will be available 100% of the time.

Thank you for your help in making Kansas City wide a useful Ham Radio resource. We are all learning as we grow. We would appreciate your suggestions, criticism, or ideas.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at feedback@kansascitywide.com.

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Operating Procedures and Protocols

Please remember, you are on a Digital linked repeater system. Not only are there fifty plus repeaters on the network, but there are also many other modes that are connected as well. Digital is quite different from analog. There is always digital internet latency that does not happen on analog that you must consider. The system can only repeat the first one that talks. Two people talking at the same time often means no one gets repeated. You will not hear a heterodyne of the two signals mixing like on analog.

Please do not quick key (kerchunk) or tailgate the end of another transmission. You must key up, count to two, then begin to talk. When you are finished talking, do a two count before unkeying.

Please leave 3-4 seconds or so between transmissions. This allows the linking and unlinking to work properly. Being too quick on the PTT button can exclude someone from trying to get in from another mode, repeater or that might have an emergency.

Please do not connect to the KC-Wide owned and maintained repeaters and try to change rooms. A complete list of our repeaters is on the website. They are set up so you cannot change rooms. However, in trying to do so you will take the repeater off-line and interrupt the network.  

Also, on a KC-Wide repeater you do not need to press and hold the Dx button to be in WIRES-X mode. Just make sure your radio is in DN mode (not VW).

Please ID every ten minutes with your call sign. This is needed because of all the different modes that are on the network offering unique features.

Make sure you enter your legal call sign into your Fusion radio’s memory or computer or at some point the system will block you from the network. If you are not being heard in the network, this is the first thing to check.

We hope this helps explain the system. We are working hard to keep the system working and be available for you.

Thank you for joining us on America’s Kansas City Wide.