Thursday 7.0257 MHz ± 2 kHz

2140 NZT (0840Z summer 0940Z winter).

If conditions are too poor on 40 m the net will QSY to 3.5257 MHz ± 2 kHz

Not the LATEST NEWS now, but still the best

VK3BTV and ZL3TK achieved the first known amateur trans-Tasman exchange of Enigma-encrypted traffic in June 2024 using virtual M3 machines, the same machines as those deployed by the German Heer and Luftwaffe (army and air force).

This exchange took place three years after the first intra-ZL exchange of Enigma traffic between ZL1ANY and ZL3TK, and nine years after the idea was first imagined.

Click here to view the Enigmagrams

The SAS Net is all about business, whether that be training for traffic handling or traffic handling itself, it will be devoid of idle chatter. The underlying purpose is to efficiently pass traffic, preferably encrypted traffic, with the dual goals of education and CW skill-building.

There is one codicil: in all cases where encrypted traffic is sent, it must include an OPNOTE pointing to an ad hoc decrypt utility.

Imagine yourself as a British SOE-trained radio operator who has been dropped into Nazi occupied Europe to support an established SOE agent or to join one of many escape lines, resistance groups such as the Maquis in France, or Italian partisans. Your contacts will be with only your SOE handler's radio operator in London, conducted in in Morse code at scheduled times on crystal-controlled frequencies, your information and questions often going unacknowledged. Because of the short life expectancy of clandestine radio operators in war time, your equipment will always be carefully hidden until it is needed, then transmissions must be as brief as possible to avoid detection by the Wehrmacht RDF, Funkpeilung.

The limits of that SOE concept do not confine the SAS CW Net, on the contrary, any secret communications used by any nationality may be used, the Stazi, the Kempeitai, KGB, CIA, etc., the One Time Pad and Enigma being the most common for CW exchanges.

In-clear QTCs are also acceptable for training in traffic protocols or passing general information. These are considered exercises leading to encrypted traffic handling.

Listeners are invited to join in by copying encrypted traffic regardless
of the addressee, decrypt it and send the result by email to:

Guaranteed acknowledgement. If no reply within 48 hours please resend.

FORMAL TRAFFIC NET PROCEDURES APPLY IN ALL CASES

Before transmitting any encrypted messages on the SAS Net, please become familiar with the Rules of Engagement to ensure compliance.

Rules of Engagement don't apply to messages in clear .

Here's an opportunity to put your CW skills to serious use through innovation, challenges, encryption and plain-text QTCs. Between weekly nets, calling frequencies are 3.5157 MHz and 7.0257 MHz,
for testing and encryption experimentation purpose. Please send your formal, encrypted QTCs
via the Thursday SAS Net ... so that everyone has the opportunity to participate.

https://cryptii.com/ is a resource providing many encryption options, not all are suitable for CW.
A URL to an ad hoc decryption facility must be established and an OPNOTE composed before
transmitting any traffic using any different encryption method to those we have already prepared.

Cryptii runs on your browser Java platform and does not need installation ... try it, it's clever,
but understand you are undertaking an academic exercise without experiencing a hands-on machine.

Experimentation with diverse encryption methods is welcome, so long as a
URL pointing to an ad hoc decryption facility is made available, either via
an OPNOTE giving a URL (recommended) or verbosely (not recommended).

Contributors to this net are invited to submit their Wireless Telegram
message text, including preamble, for upload to their own history page.
An exclusive page on this site will be created by request to:

Some Considerations Regarding Encrypted CW Traffic.

German Enigma traffic was sent only once. No repeats or repeat requests were permitted due to a known lack of operator discipline which could compromise the security of the key and therefore the message contents. Nonetheless, Enigma worked successfully because random letter-for-letter substitution meant that a single letter error resulted in only a single-letter error in decryption. Despite the occasional error, the context was usually sufficient to provide an acceptable understanding of the message text, bearing in mind digits were not included on Enigma keyboards. This meant that all numbers had to be spelled out which eliminated any ambiguity issues with map coordinates, orders, weather reports or military results.

Repeats are a necessity for dictionary-based encryption systems. Repeats are not a threat to the key, and indeed contemporary OTP traffic is repeated over and over by those mysterious ‘number’ stations. One-for-one random letter substitution is used and integers may be included, so there's no need for numbers to be spelled out so long as the dictionary includes them.

On the SAS Net when passing encrypted traffic, we send the message text twice to reduce error counts. A procedure alert . ?? is sent at the end of the first instance, then the message text is repeated, the second instance ending with the standard = <BT>

An efficient group-by-group check-sum utility has been created for One Time Pad encrypted messages. Here's a link to the decrypt instructions.

Longer transmissions are not such an important factor in 21st Century amateur radio environment, considering ... 1. You're not bobbing about in the Atlantic in a surfaced Unterseeboot ... and 2. there are no keen WRNS Wrens in wooden huts at intercept stations all along Great Britain's south coast eagerly trying to DF you! We can afford to be quite relaxed time-wise allowing as many repeat requests as needed to complete the task.