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In Jerry Stuckle writes:
On 2/11/2016 2:49 PM, wrote:
On Saturday, February 6, 2016 at 11:41:00 AM UTC-6, KC5FM/WX5EM wrote:
On Friday, January 29, 2016 at 10:33:03 PM UTC-6, wrot
e:
Something over a decade ago I was active in National Traffic System net
s,
If one looks at the 7290 Traffic Net ... http://7290trafficnet.org/ ... o
ne would conclude that the National Traffic System is still around.
No, the web site that you cite says, "The 7290 Traffic Net is an independen
t, public service traffic net." It is not a part of the National Traffic Sy
stem. That does not make it bad, but my question was about NTS, not indepe
ndent traffic nets.
The American Radio Relay League still has it at http://www.arrl.org/nts
One can search for the NTS nets in their section there.
Again, this proves nothing. The fact that there are listings in the directo
ry for a net does not mean that the net meets on a regular basis or that it
fills the job that it needs to play in the structure of NTS. Even more tha
n ten years ago there were some section nets that were no longer sending re
presentatives to the region nets. My expectation is that this has become th
e norm in the intervening years, and that the system is essentially dead. T
he only way it works is to have regular participation by enough people so t
hat when traffic needs to be routed to a specific location that the people
are available to do so. This seems highly unlikely.
Technology moves on. There's really no need for a long-haul ham-radio organ
ized system to relay traffic now that almost anyone can just place a teleph
one call at zero incremental cost. It's sad to me, but not a surprise.
I would dispute that. Over the last 48 years, I've been involved in
several disasters where phone service was unavailable. I think the need
for NTS is still there.
With that said, I'm not sure what the status of NTS is any more. I was
very active on it back in the late 70's and early 80's, but haven't done
much with it since then. I really should look it up again; I enjoyed it.
--
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Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry, AI0K
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Hi Jerry,
I agree that NTS could be an important part of providing reliable
communications and long-distance information relay in an extreme
emergency. Today, we have lots of convenience technologies that provide
instant, point-to-point and broadcast, communications all over the world
that rely on complex infrastructure that can be disrupted. Even
portable, self-powered, ground stations and satellites in orbit are
vulnerable. However, it appears that it is difficult to maintain
interest and motivation in volunteers to maintain this training based on
the possibility of a high-consequence, but low-probability, disaster
event requiring the use of NTS as a critical communications path.
One of the last times that I recall amateur radio being the only, or one
of the few, direct communications link out of an incident area was
during the invasion of Grenada in 1983, where there was a deliberate
media blackout by the U.S. military, few connections out of the island
such as phone lines, and there happened by chance to be one U.S. medical
student who was an amateur and had a working station to send updates out
of the island back to the U.S. I recall that clarification from the FCC
was required about whether non-amateurs like the media could monitor and
relay the information sent.
So as to the question, is NTS important? Yes. As to the other
question, is it still an active entity that can provide reliable
long-distance message relay via a network of stations and nets?
Possibly not, to be rebutted in the face of clearer evidence.
(73, Paul, K3FU)
- --
Paul W. Schleck
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
Finger
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