Delivery of National Traffic System messages is difficult in today's world. The low participation of amateurs in traffic handling makes the sending of messages, and, especially the delivery of messages, very spotty. The problem is, in a word - COVERAGE.
Looking at Oklahoma, we have hams in every community. Few, if any, of these hams are interested in handling the NTS traffic. This means the few hams who do enjoy passing and delivering message have to cover much more of the state.
This makes email essential to provide the COVERAGE that is needed.
I can make every net that is available within the state and still not find anyone willing to take and deliver a message to an amateur in a given town. Given the choice between a long distance call and an email, I think the choice is obvious.
Unless we can develop more interest in NTS message-handling and attract amateurs to support the NTS network, we will have to rely more on email to deliver our messages.
So what should be the guidelines for email delivery? An op-ed piece in QST recommended message delivery by email once the message was received by an amateur in the same ARRL Section as the recipient.
This seems like a good recommendation since our coverage is lacking at this level.
And why bother? It is the NETWORK and the TRAINING that are important! The network of the NTS message nets has been long established for efficiency in communication. It is important to keep these nets functional in case the need arises on a local or even a national level. Maybe there is something better, but until we develop it to the point we can depend on it, let's keeep the traffic nets operational.
The TRAINING is important as well. Learning the net procedures facilitates good habits. Practice in sending and receiving of formatted text helps develop accuracy and operator confidence.
But until message handling becomes all the rage within our ranks and people are fighting over sending and receiving messages, we will need to supplement our coverage with email.
... AR
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Ya know, I though about this in the elevator leaving work today. And its like what you're talking about, the merger of the Internet and amateur radio: What if you could move APRS packets around between digipeaters with Twitter ?
ReplyDeleteOh well.