Station Compliance›Field Notes

The nationwide EAS test is Tuesday, November 17, at 2:20 pm Eastern (11:20 am Pacific). ETRS Form Two is due 48 hours later, by 2:20 pm Eastern on Thursday, November 19. It is short. The work is in knowing what happened on your air, and that is easiest to answer while it is still happening.

I have sat in a control room through a national test. It is over in a couple of minutes, the board goes back to normal, and the afternoon carries on. That is exactly why Form Two gets missed: by Thursday, nobody remembers who was meant to file it.

The dates

If the test is postponed to the backup date, December 3, Form Two is due December 5 at 2:20 pm ET, which is a Saturday, and Form Three by January 18, 2027 (DA 26-989).

The rule normally allows 24 hours for Form Two (§ 11.61(a)(3)(iv)(B)). The 48 hours is for this test only.

What Form Two is

Form Two is the "day of test" report. In plain terms it asks two things for your station: did the test reach you, and did you put it on the air. If the answer to either is no, it asks you to say what happened. Form Three comes later and asks for more detail.

You cannot start Form Two before the test. It opens in ETRS when the test begins.

Before the 17th

• Make sure you can sign in to ETRS. If you filed Form One by October 30, you are set: the same FCC Username, tied to the same FRN. If you did not, do it this week. Untangling a Username that is not linked to the station's FRN can take days, and FCC Licensing Support (1-877-480-3201) is open weekdays only, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern.
• Decide who files. One named person, who will either be at the station at 11:20 Pacific or will hear from whoever is.
• Put it on the calendar for the afternoon of the 17th, not the 19th.

The equipment checks for before the test, firmware, clock, password and both monitoring sources, are in the pre-test checklist.

During the test: what to write down

Have a notepad, or a phone, at the EAS unit or on the board at 2:20 Eastern. Write down:

1. The time the test arrived, from the EAS unit's display or log, and the time by a clock you trust. If they differ by more than a few seconds, note that too.
2. Where it came from. The unit's log normally shows whether it arrived over IPAWS (the internet) or from one of your monitored stations, and which one.
3. Whether it went to air, and at what time. If the unit forwards automatically, note the time it did. If someone pressed a button, note who and when.
4. What it sounded like. Clean audio, both English and Spanish, or clipped, silent, garbled, cut off.
5. Anything odd. It arrived twice, arrived late, did not arrive at all, the unit showed an error.

Take a photo of the EAS unit's log screen or print the log if your unit can. It is your record of the day, and Form Three will ask for more of the same detail in January.

If the test does not arrive at all, write that down with the time you were watching, and check the log again ten minutes later. A relay through a monitored station can arrive a little after IPAWS.

After the test: file the same afternoon

With those notes in front of you, Form Two takes a few minutes. Filing it the same afternoon means:

• the person who saw it happen is the person answering,
• a sign-in problem shows up while there are still two business days to fix it,
• nobody is filing from memory on Thursday at 2:15.

If the test did not reach air, say so. A station that reports a failure has told the FCC something it needs to know. A station that does not file has a second problem.

Filing questions go to ETRS@fcc.gov.

The short version

• Tuesday, November 17, 2:20 pm Eastern / 11:20 am Pacific. Someone at the EAS unit with a notepad.
• Write down: the time it arrived, where from, whether and when it went to air, how it sounded, anything odd. Photograph the log.
• File Form Two that afternoon. It is due by 2:20 pm Eastern on Thursday, November 19.
• Keep the notes for Form Three, due January 4.

The EAS unit the test runs through is the same equipment the program-chain security rule covers. If you want all of it checked in one sitting, the kit walks through it.