Per Tom Nolan, Florida SEDAN Network Manager, these policies are to be considered "under review" and subject to change, effective March 24, 2003. One change is noted below, shown as "struck", because it is unclear whether the policy regarding the "Talk" mode will be eliminated completely or revised to reflect actual desired practice. Regarding "Talk", use good judgement...from my own experience I can say it has great training value, but large groups using talk will experience lags, and may bog down the node. Avoid "informal training" if there's a named storm churning off the coast, or during heavy local thunderstorms...aside from that, amateurs are encouraged to use and enjoy the feature.

Most organizations have RULES to guide the actions of the individuals that make up the body. Each time the organization grows larger, so does the responsibility of the members that make up the organization. Currently the SEDAN has over 100 2-meter nodes extending from near Washington DC well into Central Florida, and from the Eastern coast of the United States inland about 800 miles. SEDAN SNO’s have also established more than 35 six-meter, 9600-baud backbone nodes to the network. This makes the SEDAN the world’s largest contiguous network of its kind.

The SEDAN supports the following standards and practices as user guidelines. They are in the form of an “agreement” among the 145.770 MHz. system operators and users. These agreements are simple and not meant to be RULES; however, we do hope that each system user or member will support them with a common sense approach.

General Operating Rules

1. Use of any full service BBS or a full access PAKET program/BBS is not permitted under agreement with the coordinating committee of the States where SEDAN is established. BBS forwarding is considered malicious interference on 145.770 MHz as emergency operations could be hampered by colliding data.
2. Only personal mailboxes are used, and message content and size is maintained under 500 bytes or 80 columns wide and 7 lines. Mailbox space is limited to 128 Kbytes. A Message should be of a personal nature. Messages that are bulletin or to ALLUS should be placed on a full service BBS on the full-service BBS frequencies.
3. DX spotting traffic on 145.770 MHz is not permitted under agreement(s) within the States of coordination. TCP/IP NOS stations should use those frequencies set aside for NOS use.
4. Prime-time is defined as 5 PM until 11 PM EST. This is a period when high keyboard traffic activity may be observed. It is the concern of the SEDAN System Node Operator (SNO), however, that some users may find a need to transfer messages over 1 kb in length; should this need arise, please observe the 5 PM to 11 PM time period and refrain from passing long files during this period. Maintain PACLen at 128 or less. It is our goal to provide a dependable means of keyboard to keyboard and emergency communications, and long file transfers could compromise the effectiveness of the network in an emergency .
5. Beacons tend to create excessive traffic on the frequency. Users who are new to the SEDAN may wish to set the Beacon time to 255, or to the longest period possible. After a few days of beacons, there should be no purpose to beacon, as most users in the new user’s area will have observed his/her presence. To operate in the best interest of the SEDAN system, please set your beacons to 0 (zero) or OFF. This is a courtesy we offer to each other so that you may enjoy the same benefits as other users.
6. Using the TALK or CONVERS mode in the SEDAN node is for Wx-Watch and Emergency Round-table use only. The TALK mode of the X-1J+ node is similar to the CONVERSE or Conference node and reflects the same problem associated with the CONVERS node. If, as a SNO, you feel there is a need to use the TALK mode for net roll-call, then please limit the period of use to an hour or less, and before the high traffic period of 5 p.m. and 11 p.m.
7. Only gateways that support communications between the SEDAN and the associated SEDAN high-speed backbone(s) may be employed. All other such bridges will be ACL’d from access or use.