I got this radiogram in the mail. The message was originated by a ham friend of mine on Thursday, July 16 (my birthday) and mailed to me by the ham in PA to whom he passed the message. I received it on Monday, July 20. While I applaud my friend’s effort to use the National Traffic System (NTS), getting this in the mail just seemed crazy to me.
First of all, why did the ham who handled the traffic mail it to me? It would have been a lot more expedient for him to just phone me. It certainly cost him more to mail it than it would have been for him to just phone me, unless he doesn’t have a modern cellphone plan with nearly unlimited “long distance” calling.
I guess this is just an indication of how poorly NTS operates these days. That’s not really a criticism. There’s just no need for it anymore. We keep saying, “Well, what if the cell network goes down?” That can happen, I suppose, but how often, and for how long on average, is an area without cellphone service? My guess would be not very often and not very long.
I don’t know how much effort is being expended in keeping NTS running, but is it really worth the effort? I’m somewhat familiar with the system, so I know why this message took so long to get to me. If my friend, David, had sent it to someone less familiar with NTS and less forgiving, this would have been laughable. Do we want to be laughed at like that?
Imagine if ARRL would have deployed a distributed, de-centralized, open messaging system that interoperated with the Internet and RFC standards and allowed ad hoc nodes, instead of hitting the easy button and going with the centralized and closed Winlink years ago. That would have been a worthy and effective replacement for the current NTS system of voice and CW nets.
I feel like perceptions of this outcome could vary substantially between individuals. While mailing you a printed Radiogram wasn’t particularly efficient, it is kind of a neat thing that I’d certainly enjoy receiving. And, seeing as how your most excellent birthday (one we share BTW!) isn’t exactly an emergency circumstance, postal delivery of the message seems like a reasonable choice, left (by my skimming of the NTS manual) to the last sender’s discretion. I don’t expect anyone to be laughing at hams over this any more than they might already. We do some anachronistic stuff for fun, often with some potentially more practical application in the background. This strikes me as fitting into that vein.
You know I should have mentioned that I really did appreciate the message. I’m going to modify the text above.
Shame on you Dan! I’ve always loved getting Radiograms. It’s the maintenance of a long standing tradition, like using Morse. Let’s not reduce the world to text messaging and email just because they’re more efficient and modern. Remember, the medium is the message and I’d take a Radiogram over a phone call any day of the week!
Radiograms are cool. With that said I wonder what their utility is for disaster comms today. But the NTS is not dead, and there is lots of talk of a revival and improvements.
For a technology hobby I can’t understand the fascination with old tech and shunning new tech.
“For a technology hobby I can’t understand the fascination with old tech and shunning new tech.”
First, ours isn’t foremost a technology hobby, it’s a radio hobby. But to your point, hams make use of technology all the time. I suppose Dan’s friend could have just picked up his cell phone and called to wish him Happy Birthday bypassing the NTS altogether but the old tech Radiogram was just better than the new tech cell phone call in this instance.
Why handcraft a nice present for someone when you can pick up something plastic from WalMart for a gift?
Life isn’t always about better and faster and higher tech.
I find it interesting too that you got it ultimately via PA – I don’t participate in NTS, but it was my understanding that you’re only supposed to “accept” messages for delivery if it’s something you could deliver in person if the situation requires it – i.e. shouldn’t the person in PA have passed the message via the nets, so that someone close to you would be the “delivery” person?
Gee wiz, Dan. It’s a hobby. All hobbies are stupid. I like CW which is the dumbest way to use the rig I have, but it’s the mode in the hobby I enjoy most.
Now, off to get more expensive golf clubs that I can’t use.
The operators are practicing skills of origination, relay, and delivery. In exercises we commonly use “artificialities” to allow us to focus on skills that we want to develop or maintain.
Were you at a shelter getting a message, or an ICP, or an EOC, or somewhere else, they could put the message up on a message board for you. Use of the postal service is an artificiality in any case, even if it someone local.
It is strange that someone took the message and then after a single hop put it in the mail. I’d expect that if the traffic were received on a local net, it should be relayed on a Section Net, then to Eastern Area, and from there to Eighth Region, to Michigan Section, to local, and to you. But we don’t know what the operator was thinking or why he chose that route. Could be a new operator. Might not actually be the operator who got the message from your friend. Could be someone who realized that he wouldn’t be able to get on to a net for several days because of unexpected travel but cared enough to drop it in the mail. These are all obviously guesses but the real world is strange.
Radiograms may seem like anachronisms but NTS does a good job of daily operations that provide outlets for getting a message from one place to another. Many people have lost sight of the emergency communications role that it should be prepared to play and it’s true that many traffic nets have atrophied. It’s easy (and lazy) to blame ARRL for not “doing something,” but the fact is that there are places where NTS is being put to good use, and where operators are designing the system and training people to use it to good ends.
See the example of Ohio (because I’m most familiar), and what we’ve done with our SET in the past few years, and how we’ve handled the Red Cross exercise May 30 this year. See North Florida, the Hot and Cold exercise March 1. (Again, I was there.) I’m sure there are other examples that get too little press.
The Central Ohio Traffic Net has reports available, annual reports from the past two years, some recent After-Action Reports, training tips, news items showing activation, some exercises we’ve conducted with local CERT, and use of NBEMS for moving arbitrarily formatted traffic.
Our Buckeye Net is starting mixed-mode operations at the Section level like we’ve done locally, where we call the net by voice and pass traffic with NBEMS.
We’re currently in the midst of a project that is using NTS nets to relay messages from the section to districts, from districts to their counties, and for the counties to take action and return information.
If your local nets are not performing useful function, I can’t help but wonder why. If your jam isn’t public service, then fine, but if you do want to be about being an “emergency communicator,” the question arises: what are you doing to make the system better, more capable, more modern?
Ohio ARES County Information Report Project 20 Concept of Operations: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IOOchjz052K1-dDb79Vxz1c0kDm-kQOyeiQCd9Go2tg/edit?usp=sharing
Buckeye Net References: https://buckeyenetweb.wordpress.com/reference/
Central Ohio Traffic Net Reports: http://www.cotn.us/reports
73 de KD8TTE
Not sure if it was your Friend Dave or someone else along the line, but why would you send ARL Forty Six (Greetings on your birthday and best wishes for many more to come.) then send it again in the message, the point of the ARL numbered messages are to help speed up the sending and reduce the number of words. by eliminating the duplication of the message in the long format and just keeping it to the ARL numbered message it would have taken the check count from 17 down to 5, and the check should have also been ARL 17 (ARL 5 if the repeat was ommitted). Now I am not heavily active in the NTS, I have sat through a couple of presentations on it earlier this year at two club meetings (before the Covid-19 shut down of in person meetings), and did take part in K8AMH’s NTS Training seminar he put on through Zoom back last month
As N3VEM stated the PA Ham should have taken the message and passed it along to a Ham more local to you, or at the very least called you to give you the Radiogram over the phone.
I myself have received on Radiogram, it was from a Ham in Canada thanking and welcoming me for joining the RAC. It came in on the Michigan Net (3.563mhz), and one of the local Genesee County Radio Club hams took it from there to deliver to me, which he did via phone. Funny thing is about a week later I met the Ham who took the message originally from the one in Canada before relaying it on the Michigan net where the local Ham said he would do the delivery. He ended up coming to the Lapeer County radio Associations meeting to do a presentation on the NTS and my message was one he mentioned about recently taking and passing along.
While I agree that NTS is somewhat archaic, I have to wonder if it could be modernized to some extent so that the radiograms might be delivered in a more timely fashion? Maybe this is my ignorance, but perhaps if the system were used more often by more operators the transit time to destination might be improved.
Of course, this comes from someone with virtually no experience with this.
Speaking of Winlink, I attended a much-publicized Zoom webinar about Winlink, which unfortunately, seemed to ultimately be pitched to the ‘faithful few’, rather than a truly introductory course, as I thought it was advertised. The organizers were impressed by the sheer number of attendees (it hit the maximum number that particular Zoom webinar was set for, I believe 500, so some folks didn’t get in), so how could they think all those folks were Winlink users already?
They promised to send out links to some of the websites mentioned afterwards to all attendees, but I never received any further communications. Fortunately, I managed to type in the URL for the main Winlink site before it disappeared from one of the slides shown.
So far, I’ve not bothered to read it. It is still in a browser tab on my shack computer.
I guess, the upshot of all this, is that Winlink might be the cat’s meow, but there still seems to be a cabal surrounding it, and it strikes me as more difficult than it needs to be to get in, and get acquainted. I don’t think the presentation got across why I should spend my time learning Winlink.
I’m all for keeping NTS going as a means of training and operator improvement for passing traffic. I just take issue when it’s our primary system for when “all else fails.”
Winlink came out of boating. It was a system for amateur / hobbyist boaters on the seas to send and receive free email. Years ago ARRL formed a committee to determine a direction for digital messaging and loaded up the committee with several people from this group. A few members left the committee when it was clear they were merely going to rubber-stamp a decision to go with Winlink.
When I looked into getting into Winlink, it had a lot of red flags, in my opinion. The core of the system only ran on Windows. At the time there was no Linux software. The brain of the system was centralized on Windows servers. The system is run by one organization. You could not fire up a node and connect to the network without being configured in the centralized system. You couldn’t fire up an independent ad hoc system in an emergency. The protocol was badly documented and there was no real Internet operability and it seemed like it was developed in a vacuum with no knowledge or regard for RFCs or open source. Some of this may have changed over the years, but any system like this that is centralized and controlled by one entity is not good.
The NTS certainly is old but definitely not obsolete. Yes, our cell phones work wonderfully and if the logic of chucking the NTS for them is correct, our radios should go with them.
I’ve handled traffic from earthquake, tornado and hurricane disasters. For many the radiograms were the only word family got from loved ones for weeks.
Some of the hill country of southern Puerto Rico still does not have commercial power, internet or cell coverage nearly 3 years after Maria.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting chucking NTS and radio. The problem is with a geographically-oriented hierarchal network of humans communicating traffic. That was perfectly sufficient in “when all else fails” when “all else” consisted of just copper phone lines and a nascent long distance network. NTS can continue to exist, it’s just the upper layers of the “protocol stack” that need to be changed out. Radio is still layer one in that protocol stack.
Well maybe I’m stuck in the last century, but I think it’s much more formal to mail a paper copy or better yet hand deliver it.
I will agree the NTS is not really a practical thing anymore but the nostalgia is wonderful in my opinion. If cell phones go down, the land lines are out, and the internet is down, there either was a thermonuclear war or a supernova type event. Amateur radio equipment (at least the solid state stuff) will be destroyed by the induced electrical power from the atmospheric ionization. Sure some people might have gear that is disconnected and stored in a Fariday cage that they could hook up, but there won’t be enough stations to have a practical NTS.
I like having radiograms mailed is nice. Having one hand delivered is absolutely wonderful! Granted if you sent one with a higher precedence then R I would hope they would try to call or email it first.
Let’s face it sending a radiogram is not a practical form of communication in this century. Cell phones are radios and cell towers have generators just like us hams do.
I try to live in my own special world where I try to keep the old methods going. I go to great lengths to keep “obsolete” stuff alive. While I’ve surrendered and now own a cellphone and have internet this is recent, just a few years ago I didn’t own a smartphone and I still don’t own a computer. Unfortunately we are reaching a point where soon we won’t be able to function without this technology.
Sorry for the rag chew 73
Complaining about a radiogram. First time for everything I guess.