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.