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Run your first net

Create a net, take it live, and log a station checking in. By the end you'll have a live session other operators can watch in real time.

Time: ~5 minutes

Prerequisites

  • An account with a reserved callsign — net ownership is gated on holding one. Takes about three minutes if you don't have one yet.
  • A NetRoll instance — the public one, or your own. The public instance is operated on a best-effort basis with no availability guarantee — no SLA is offered — so a net that needs one should self-host.

Steps

Step 1: Create a net

Go to New net. Four choices here change how the net behaves later, so they're worth a moment:

Choice What it changes
Mode The signal-report input your loggers get during the session. Phone → RS, CW → RST, digital → dB-SNR, FM/repeater → qualitative. Pick wrong and you're typing reports in the wrong format all net.
Net type Open — stations call in freely. Roll call — you work the roster in order. This is the working style of the net, not just a label.
Visibility Listed — appears in discovery for anyone. Unlisted — reachable only by a link token, never listed. See net visibility.
Frequency (MHz) The frequency this net's first way in is planned for. A session copies it and can be retuned mid-net without editing the definition.

Fill in the title — what operators see first in discovery — and leave visibility at Listed for now. A description is optional and also shows in discovery, as a short preview under the title. Everything else can be edited later without disturbing a net already running.

Save the net. The full field set, including geography and repeater details, is there when you need it.

Step 2: Start the session

Open the net and choose Start Net. There is nothing to fill in — the session copies the net's ways in as they stand right now, and you retune one of them from the session if you QSY.

The session is now live. It appears in the active-now hero on the discovery landing page, and anyone — signed in or not — can open it and watch.

Step 3: Log a check-in

The operator console opens with the quick-add row pinned at the top of the roster, focus already in the callsign field.

Type a callsign and press Enter. The entry commits, the fields clear, and focus returns to the callsign field ready for the next station. Press n from anywhere on the page to jump back to that field.

Verify

The station you logged appears in the roster with a Staff-entered source badge, and every way the net is reachable shows in the header at the top of the session.

Open the same session URL in a second browser window — signed out is fine. The check-in you logged is already there, and the next one you log appears within a couple of seconds without a refresh. That's the live stream working.

Next steps