MARS stands for Military Affiliate Radio Service. There are 4 of
them...ARMY NAVY AIR FORCE AND MARINE CORPS ....In other words a amatuer
radio ops can study materials and take tests and get on frequencies outside
the amateur radio bands. They are very secretive about their frequencies and
members wont let them out.....What they used to do on those frequencies is
pass health and welfare traffic and stuff like birthday greetings to US
troops stationed all over the world...they were very fast in doing so
usually within 24 hours. A lot of military posts have MARS stations as well.
However since 9/11 they have pretty much changed the service and now
specialize in gathering information for FEMA....shut down
interstates.....hurricane reports.......riots.......heavy thunderstorms and
snow storms.... ....bombings.....major fires......shut down phone
services......you pretty much name it and they report it. They still
occasionally pass a MARSGRAM to a troop oversea's but with the advent of
cellphone and email all they do is train for disaster now. It would be a
good idea to get a list of all the MARS frequencies you can find and keep em
in case of national disaster....you can hear quite a bit of info on them.


Hope this helps!

KB
"Dxluver" wrote in message
...
4041.00 USB Ohio MARS Net 0038 UTC

What's that about KB?