For those of you who follow the NMCM nets, here is their official guidelines on how they assign their net designators. In MARS parlance, a net designator is a form of collective callsign used by the three MARS service programs to ID their nets.
And before the security fanatics and Cold War warriors in the NMCM go ballistic and claim that I am passing along FOUO info and aiding the enemy, below is in the public domain (Google is a wonderful tool), so cool your jet exhaust down.
Net Designators, Method of Assigning
The first character of the net designator (a numeral or letter) will denote the MARS area or region in which the net is located. Regions will be identified by figures 0 through 9 for the respective region. Areas are identified as follows:
C - Central Area
N - Northeast Area
P - Pacific Area
S - South Area
The second character of the net designator (a letter) will indicate the state in which the net is located. This letter will be assigned by the cognizant region director. If not a
state net then the 2nd letter is as follows.
· Area nets are denoted by the letter "A",
· region nets, use the letter "X".
· national level nets and/or nets under the cognizance of Chief NAVMARCORMARS, use the letter "Z".
The third character of the net designator (a numeral) will denote the first, second, third, etc., net within the region or state (regardless of its purpose or mode of operation). (The third digit in designators for nets under the cognizance of Chief, NAVMARCORMARS will denote the first, second, third, etc., net within each specialty network.)
The fourth character of the net designator (a letter) will denote the type of net as follows:
"A" Administrative Net
"B" Traffic Net
"C" Training Net
"E" ECOM Net
"V" Radio Telephone
"W" Radio teletypewriter
"X" Slow Scan TV
"Y" Single Channel Data (SCD) * see note
"Z" Other
*Note: Single Channel Data (SCD) includes Baudot, ASCII, Packet, AMTOR, ARQ (FEC), Pactor, Clover or other digital modes.
EXAMPLES OF NET DESIGNATORS
A. UZ1Z: THE FIRST NATION WIDE MARS DATA SYSTEM NET;
B. PA1A: THE FIRST PACIFIC AREA ADMINISTRATIVE NET;
C. 5X1B: THE FIRST TRAFFIC NET IN THE FIFTH NAVY-MARINE CORPS MARS REGION;
D. 8U3C: THE THIRD TRAINING NET IN THE STATE OF UTAH, EIGHTH NAVY-MARINE CORPS MARS REGION;
E. 4D1E: THE FIRST ECOM NET IN THE STATE OF GEORGIA, FOURTH NAVY-MARINE CORPS MARS REGION.
More to follow on MARS and CAP in future post.
