All righty, then we can go ahead and get rolling here. And I'll just again say,
welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining in today's session on the National Traffic System
and the radiogram that we use to move traffic, or in this case messages, across the country.
My fancy title is Section Traffic Manager, which is just a nice way of saying that I kind of
oversee traffic handling here in the North Texas section and look for opportunities to help
you folks learn more about traffic handling skills and keep an eye on the system to see
if there's any improvements or changes or anything like that that we could do.
So again, thank you so much for joining in. And I guess kind of a fun way to start things is
talk about how I got started in traffic handling. It was many years ago. I was in
Michigan at the time, and hence the eight in my call sign. And we were preparing with the county
ARIES-RACES group as a combined group to hold a simulated emergency test. And when they were
handing out assignments, they got to me and they said, okay, we need you to go to the hospital
and use this radiogram to send in a request to the emergency operations center. And I just
kind of said, I don't know what you're talking about. And so that started my journey into
what is the radiogram format and how does it fit in the way that we provide public service and
those types of things. And so from there, I've kind of built it up over time. And now I kind
of oversee things and again, try to pass the knowledge along. So again, thanks so much for
joining in. Let's see if this thing's going to move forward. There we go. So just to give kind
of a quick what we're going to do during this time. Just a quick high level overview of the
traffic system. I don't want to go into a ton of detail. It's boring. But I think if you have a
good 30,000 foot view, that'll help. Kind of the skills that you gain from participating in traffic
handling. And then we'll dive into the radiogram and its components. And then we'll have some
hands-on practice and kind of talk about how traffic nets work and things if you want to join
in on one of those. Again, if you have any questions at all while we're going through things,
even if it's a... hey, I remember you talked about that in the radiogram header, but could you
explain that one more time? Feel free to throw them in the chat and we'll kind of take those
questions as they come in. All righty. So a quick overview of the traffic system.
Essentially, we're an organized network of hams that move these messages across country and beyond
and started in 1914-1915 as the formal system for relaying traffic across the country. This is
the relay in American Radio Relay League. This is why the ARRL formed, was to move these messages
across the country. And so if you get that random Jeopardy question of what is the relay in ARRL,
I guess now you know the answer. But this is how the league got started. And since then,
we've been continuously moving traffic across country and beyond. The types of things that
we move, we'll start with the highest level of urgency, emergency traffic. And so these are the
life and death type things. I need a generator now, or I need diesel for the generator in five
hours, or the hospital is going to have a big problem, and I'm trying to summarize it. But
those types of things. Also specific instructions like evacuate the area or those types of things.
Thankfully, we don't get a lot of emergency traffic on the traffic system, but we can designate
items as emergency to make sure they push through the system quickly and effectively. Then we have
priority traffic. This is where time is important, but it's not quite the life and death. So maybe
notifications on number of injuries or shelter will be established at this address at this time,
those types of details. Then we go to welfare traffic. And during incidents, this is kind of
the general use of the traffic system. I want to let my family know I'm okay, or I have family in
that area, I want to know if they're okay. And so we'll move these welfare messages in and out of
affected areas. And so think Puerto Rico with the earthquake, you can think Houston with hurricanes,
and we just want to let family members know we're okay, that type of thing. We'll move those through
the system as welfare traffic. And then the general type of traffic that we have go through
the system, because thankfully, we're not in disasters all the time, is routine traffic.
So these are kind of the well wishes, sometimes the welcome to the hobby, or
happy birthday, Merry Christmas, those types of messages. And those messages help us test
the system to make sure that we're ready to go if something happens. And it helps new operators
build their skills. And it helps us keep practicing those skills to build that muscle memory so that
when we do get into an incident, we're ready to go. We've already been running and we're well
established. And we've got the rhythm and we can just kick into it and keep rolling in things.
NTS is primarily US and Canada. And we do have the ability to move traffic internationally through
the system overall. I know Peter dl4fn is in Germany, and he participates in traffic handling
and will send messages across. We'll get them here in North Texas. I know he sends them to other areas
to third party agreement supply. So you're not sending traffic to North Korea, as far as I know.
And you can, you can send traffic on behalf of third parties, you don't have to be a ham
to put traffic into the system or receive traffic from the system.
But if you're going international, then the third party rules apply on those.
Modes are generally what you would think voice, CW, so Morse code, and then digital, such as a
digital traffic network, which I know with the way the hand bands have the HF bands have been,
digital is really nice for punching through the conditions type of thing.
But thankfully, here in North Texas, we have a lot of traffic activity. So the 7290 traffic net,
which is a voice net, that's 7.290. Imagine that. A lot of activity, even with the way the bands are
sometimes they'll run into that we couldn't quite move it. And you know, you have to kind of get the
relay going between stations to make it happen. But thankfully, the conditions have been fair,
I guess. Here's how a message would generally move through this system. So the way we stack
this is we try to start things kind of the same way with when we handle disasters, we start and
end at the at the local level. And so let me see if I can get my fancy laser pointer to work. So
we'll start things here at the at the local net level. And then we'll work that traffic up to
either region or area nets depends on how far it's going to travel, and have it jump across
on those and then come back down and make its way back to a local net in the delivery area so that a
ham in that local area can make make that delivery. And let me see if I can maybe clarify that a
little bit better with an example of how something moves. And so let's say I want to send a message
to a family member in Michigan from here in Texas, I go to my local net. And I say I have
one piece of traffic that's headed to Michigan. And the net control station will work to find
another traffic handler that can move it towards Michigan. And I'll talk about how the net control
station kind of figures that out later. Once that person's identified, that other station will take
that traffic from me and then keep it moving towards Michigan. And so in this example, which
is a real world piece of traffic I sent, that station then relayed it over the digital traffic
network to a traffic handling node in Indiana that is set up, you could kind of think of it like an
email server, except there's no internet involved or anything. You're going over the air for all
this. It goes to that node, and then that node hangs on to it saying, okay, I have this message
stored that's on its way to Michigan. Station in Michigan connects to that node and checks, do I
have any traffic that I could take to my area for local delivery, finds that there, then says, okay,
I'll take it, it gets relayed to their station. And then in this case, that station happened to be
five miles from my family member up there in the thumb region. And so hop on the phone, and they
make that last mile delivery by phone. The vast majority of these are delivered by phone as the
last mile. Can you do email? Yeah, but we like to have the personal touch for these kinds of
messages, you know, the happy birthdays or things. Also gives a chance to explain, hi, I'm random
amateur radio operator, and I'm calling you with this message, you know, kind of email would kind
of get lost with that. And it also better reflects when we're in a disaster, and we're, you know, say
we're sending that welfare message, hi, I'm okay. If you're on the receiving end, how would you prefer
to get it? Would you like an email? Or would you like to have someone that calls and make sure that
they know and say, hey, I got this message from your family member, it says that they're okay,
they're at the shelter, you know, you have that personal touch and, and, and, and making sure that
that message actually reaches the recipient, because if the phone call, you know, you get a
busy signal or something, we try again, whereas with the email, we just kind of send it and,
you know, then we don't know after that, unless they're nice enough to reply.
So comment in the chat, that's why I got a call from a random ham when I got my license.
So there are some traffic handlers that monitor the FCC database for new hams, they also will
monitor for licenses, licenses that are about to expire, it just kind of depends on on how they
want to approach it. And then they'll send the traffic, whether it's, you know, the welcome to
the hobby, or your license expires on August 10, please be sure to renew if you haven't yet,
those types of things. Those types of messages are good, because it helps introduce new hams
to the hobby, to here's a whole nother facet of this hobby, right? There's a lot of different
things you can do with amateur radio, whether it's, you know, doing digital, or FT8, or Morse
code, or traffic handling, or, you know, emergency communications, Skywarn, or I just want to talk to
France and know that I made it, or, you know, there's a lot of different things that you can
do. And plus, I feel these messages help bring the personal touch to the hobby that, you know,
we're all kind of in this, and we're glad that, you know, we're making those connections as hams.
I know, you know, sometimes might only talk to another operator for a minute,
but it's just cool to make that connection with other folks. But yeah, that's why you'll sometimes
get that, you know, welcome to the hobbies and, you know, enjoy the fun and friendships you will
make. You know, I've seen that piece of traffic enough times, I can, you know, write it in my
sleep type of thing. If other questions or comments, again, feel free to throw them in the
chat. We'll keep rolling here, though. So how does traffic handling help build your skill set as a
ham? A lot of it is just how you interact on the air. Whether that you're on a traffic net, or a
SkyWarn net, social net, you know, information net, those types of things. With traffic handling,
well, we'll start at the top here. Slow is fast, right? We're trying to relay this message across.
And, you know, if we're in a real disaster scenario, and I could think like the awesome mud
slide up in Seattle, where a giant wall of mud comes sliding down the hillside and takes out
square miles of land, and now you have a big mud pile with houses and trees and cell antenna towers
and, you know, all that in it. And you're out there throwing a wire in a tree, hopefully, if
you've got one nearby, and you're doing things, probably doing it by pen and paper. And so if you
speak too fast, right, and I imagine you're trying to write it down on the other end. We need six
cases of water and 12 cots and five, you know, the other person is just gonna, okay, I give up.
Slow is fast. I only have to say it once. If I go too fast, then you're gonna, I need you to say
that again, or could you say this again, or that, and we're gonna burn more time. And in the meantime,
you have all this other traffic that could be waiting to move, but it's having to sit there
and wait, because you're having to repeat the message a few times in order to get it across. So
whatever you think slow is, go slower than that. Also helps if you enunciate certain words,
just part of that speaking clearly, we want to try and get it across the first time
if we can. And then I like to view this lens under the lens of you're not reading it,
you're sending it. And I think that just puts a whole different context on what we're trying to
achieve with traffic handling. We want the radiogram as, you know, whether it's sloppily
as I've written it on here, we want it to arrive like almost a Xerox copy, like 99% of what's
filled out on this is what should appear at the other end when it gets there. We want it there
word for word and letter for letter. So again, when I think of it, I'm not reading it to the other
station, I'm sending it, I'm relaying it across to the other station. It also helps you build
familiarity with participating in NETS. I know one of the fun parts on some traffic NETS is
the NET control station will say, please check in with your call sign phonetically only.
And then you get, well this is Kilo 8 Alpha Mike Hotel and my name's Aaron and I'm in North Dallas
and I have no traffic, you know. We just want you to check in with your call sign phonetically only.
So participating in these NETS, you start to tune in on what exactly are the instructions from
the NET control station. I mean, that applies with SkyWarn NETS. I don't know how many folks
have jumped in on SkyWarn NETS and you always get that one, that, you know, minimum reporting
criteria. I only want to know about half inch hail or cloud rotation. And then you get the
sirens are going off. No one cares, so to speak. You know, if they're going off, we already know
there's a tornado warning there. Thanks for telling us the sirens went off, but we want to
know about hail and we want to know about, you know, cloud rotation, right? And so, you know,
you get that, you get that feel from the NET control station by listening and Brennan's got a
great comment. Listen, listen, listen. I would even say that for any NET. Before you jump in and
participate, listen to it for a bit. Get a feel for how it operates before you jump in. It just
helps you get into the groove of it a lot faster if you get the feel for how that NET runs. And
we'll go over that a little bit more in the, in the, how the traffic NETs run. ITU Phonetics,
they're the gold standard. So Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Phosphorus. If you're on a
local NET that's, that's focused on, on, on training as well as moving traffic, like we have
here in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, we have a two meter traffic NET happens twice a day.
If you come in with a dog or a cat, you know, we'll, we won't hate it. But we will in time
want you to build those ITU Phonetics. And if you're jumping in on a traffic NET that's like
regional area, you're on HF and you're moving traffic, very much the gold standard. We're very
much looking for ITU Phonetics. So this is a good way to practice those ITU Phonetics. ProWords.
Say again, you're a traffic, or correction, or I Roger, you know, these types of ProWords
not only apply to traffic handling, but they're, they're used generally in on air
communications. So whether that's public safety dispatchers, if you've ever worked
with, you know, police or fire, that type of thing, it's the same things.
Can you repeat your traffic, please? Or, you know, that type of thing. Air traffic control.
It's a good way to build your skills on phonetics before you get into the disaster.
And we'll go over some of those ProWords in a bit. Alternate phonetics are frustrating.
Always fun when you're working with the PD and it's Adam Boy King. And if you say, you know,
Alpha Bravo Kilo, they kind of look at you. And they're like, sorry, I just used what everybody
else uses. But yeah, Alpha Bravo. But it's, yeah, just, just, yeah, it's just fun. All right,
let's keep going before I rattle on that any further. Brevity. So when we look at the blank
radiograms, there are 25 spaces. And we want you to be quick and to the point. It's the same thing
when you're, again, public safety, or if you're on a SkyWarnet, and you've got cloud rotation,
you know, it's not time for a start. Well, I'm outside and it's windy. So I looked up and I saw
the cloud spin funny. And I watched it, you know, get to the point. What is it? I'm at XYZ
intersection and the cloud rotation has started and there may be lowering. Yeah, that's the crux of
the message. And so same thing with radiograms. You know, if you can say it in five words rather
than 10, well, then say it in five words, you know, that type of thing. Okay, don't know how
many folks have dived into the Incident Command System, maybe as part of ARIES, Amateur Radio
Emergency Service. Fun fact, that's actually sister programs. So National Traffic System and
ARIES are our sister programs in ARL's public safety programs type of thing. If you're moving
213s over the air, the way I like to think of it is if I'm walking into the disaster, and I got to
have someone sit down at the radio and handle moving those 213s, and I've got two options,
I've got someone that's never moved anything ever, or I've got someone that's moved a bunch
of radiograms to the traffic system, you know, who am I going to pick? I'm going to pick the person
that's got the experience. And why is that? I love this quote at the top, when the disaster begins,
the time to prepare ends. It's really been interesting watching, you know, like with the
COVID-19 pandemic and folks, you know, what am I going to do to this? Like, well, we're in it now,
so you're not, you're not preparing anymore, you are reacting, right? And so for folks that,
you know, I know I get the tinfoil hat sometimes of why I have, you know, water and some, you know,
awful tasting food that if I had to eat it, I would, but, you know, how do you get, you know,
how do you prepare beforehand by practicing? Because once we're in the disaster, that's not
the time to learn, that's the time to go. And so build those skills up before you get in there,
if you can help it. Mistakes, we'll talk about that here. Any, any questions that you have,
again, throw them in the chat, feel free to throw them in there. We'll keep rolling here.
I like to say that smart mistakes are okay.
When you go to learn,
that's just part of it, you know, sometimes it's just, oh, I didn't quite understand that right,
or that type of thing. So if you're on a traffic net, and you make an error, and you know it,
then just correct it, you know, oh, correction, and that's a pro word, correction, and we'll go
over that. Or if someone gives you some feedback over the error, you know, well, first, hopefully
they're kind about it. But, you know, we're giving that feedback to help you tune your skills,
so that you can jump in and have those skills built before we get into the disaster.
And especially when I know there are new traffic handlers joining in on the traffic nets, and,
you know, sometimes look at that. Aaron is just being cranky, because, you know, I want to get
those habits built early. Because if you start to learn it wrong, and then we come back and try and
well, this is actually how it should go, it's a lot harder to unravel all of that muscle memory
you've built, versus if we catch it in the beginning. So when you, if you get started
on a traffic net, and it's like, well, here's some feedback, that type of thing, we want to
help you build that skill set right from the beginning, rather than having to come in later
and go, well, now you need to, you know, change it, and then you're going to be the, you know,
I keep forgetting, I keep forgetting. So we want to get that built right in the beginning as you
get rolling. If there's one thing that I can have you walk away with, from this talk, without going
too deep into the psychology world, you know, the biggest question I get is, I'm going to get on the
air, and I'm going to get on the traffic net, and I'm going to make a mistake, and I'm going to sound
stupid. We've all been there. I have been traffic handling for a bit, and I still make mistakes.
And I like to joke that, well, I'm putting the amateur in amateur radio today, I made a mistake,
right? And we just keep rolling with it. I acknowledge a mistake, and we keep rolling.
And it's the same thing, if someone else jumps in, and there's a mistake, it is not the end of
the world. This is how we learn and grow. We embrace something that's new. Hopefully, we try
and build our base knowledge before we jump in, rather than jumping in blind. But, you know, when
mistakes happen, that's when learning occurs, and that's how we build those skills. So, you know,
if you have folks that, you know, how do I overcome that fear? Jump in. You know, that's the best
advice I can give you is just roll with it. Okay, that's kind of the 30,000-foot view of the
traffic system and kind of the skills you can get. This is a really good kind of the meat part of it.
But I'll check with folks, any questions on that kind of 30,000-foot view? Again, I could go into
the different, you know, what are different traffic nets and regions and that type of thing. But, you
know, can be kind of boring as you're starting out. So, you know, I'll take an opportunity to
fuel for a bit. And then if no questions, we'll jump into the radiogram. Mistakes are always...
All right. So, the comment in the chat. So, for the recording that, you know, folks know. Our local
ADS is also training that mistakes are always welcome. Yeah, we try to help folks learn and
grow and that type of thing. And even, you know, maybe it's, let's just talk offline by email real
fast and let me help clarify type of thing. Yeah, it's always... Our goals with training nets is to
help folks build their skills. All right. We'll move into the radiograms. And again, any questions,
just throw them in there. So, why radiograms? It's still the same thing. Why ICS-213? It's the
general message form. It's the standardized message format that we're all using. So, whether the
radiograms here in the U.S. or it's up to Canada or it's across to Germany or whatnot, it's the same
form. And it allows us to effectively move the traffic across the board
in a way that's traceable. And this is the one thing I really like about the radiograms versus
the 213s. We have some things in the header and things to help track it and help to try and make
sure words aren't lost as it moves in transit or things like that. But if we do have a radiogram
that disappears into the ether, and it does happen, we can start to follow that message across.
All right, who did you relay it to? And okay, you got it. And who did you send it to? And
sometimes we'll send that follow-up and then suddenly the message appears at its destination.
It's like, well, it got hung up somewhere and, you know, that type of thing. But
we can follow them through if we need to. So, this is the form. If you've printed it out,
we'll have you try and fill one out in a bit. But we'll walk through how this works first.
A little bit of animations in here. And it's sort of smooth when it goes over online. So,
hopefully, it's not jumping too bad. But, you know, for the conversation,
it won't affect things. But, you know, okay. So, we'll break the radiogram into these blocks.
And the first one is the roughest one. So, we'll spend a little extra time in it. And then the
rest of them will be easier. So, the header, overall, just is what helps us track that
message. You can think of it like the email header. Like, who's it from, who's it to,
so to speak. But two gets its own spot on a radiogram. But this is what helps us to track
these things. It starts with a number. And this number is assigned by whoever first fills out
the blank radiogram. So, if I have one of these and I start filling it out,
I would give it a unique number so that I can track it in my records. There's no standardized
way of doing this. I started with one. And then my second one was two. And my third one is three.
Some folks will go by the month. So, if it's March and it's their first one, they'll go 301 and the
next one will be 302. And then when, you know, it's July, so 701, 702. It's kind of however you
want to do it. And then you can reset them, you know, periodically if you want. So, maybe the
first of the year, you go back to one. Some stations do it by month. Again, it's just kind of
however you want to do it. I've been rolling with the same numbers for a few years. I'm at 390
something. And I might go back to one when I hit 500 or something like that. But again,
this is just for your own records. This and everything else that we're going to talk about,
aside from the little tracking items at the end, will all stay exactly the same as this moves
through the system. So, your number will stay attached to this all the way through. And then
if we have to come back and ask you a question, you know, we have a question about your number one,
then you know how to go back in your records and do that.
Precedence is... oh, here's a good question in the chat before I jump into precedence.
Are we required to archive our messages? It is a good practice to hang on to them.
And I would hang on to them for maybe one or two months. Now, this is for routine traffic.
I would hang on to them for a month or two. Just in case there's that odd question,
you know, one month is good. I think two is some extra insurance.
And then you can discard them however you want to do that. I keep mine electronically now.
I started with paper and I think that's a really great way to begin. I find that
by actually having the physical page and filling it out by hand and things,
I learn it better that way for me. And so, same thing with net controlling. When, you know,
I started it was written down and I get the feel for it. If you start with software and then
you wind up in the field and there are no computers and you're having to do it by paper
and you've never done it by hand before, you're going to have a big learning curve
versus if you build the skill with paper first and then transfer it.
So, I would start with written documents and then hang on to them for about a month,
maybe two, and then you can go ahead and, you know, recycle them, right? It's what you're
supposed to do or, you know, that type of thing. That's a good question. Again,
any others throw them in there. We'll continue precedence. This is back to that,
you know, what's the urgency of this thing? Emergency, priority, welfare, or routine.
When we fill out the radiogram, typically I'll just write R for routine. When I say it on the
air, I say routine, but I'll write R. The only word that always gets spelled out is emergency.
We want to call out the high level of importance of emergency traffic. So, the word emergency is
always written out, but the others like priority, welfare, or routine, we just write their initial
and we call it a day. Handling instruction. This provides some guidance on how the message
should be handled as it moves through the system and also about delivery. I'm going to put them on
screen. These are also in the handout if you happen to print it out. The most common one
that you're going to see is Hotel X-Ray Golf, the last one, which basically says,
please don't spend any money trying to deliver this. If you are going to have to spend money
to deliver it, well then just cancel the delivery, but let me know. And that's what we mean by
service originating station, is you send something back to whoever, you know, put that in the system
to say, you know, unable to deliver or whatever that reason is type of thing. We'll go into that
a little bit later. The one that is kind of despised in this list is Hotel X-Ray Delta,
which is essentially real-time tracing. So if I introduce something with a Hotel X-Ray Delta
instruction, what will happen is every time that message moves, those stations will need to send
me a report on that movement. So I send it to someone else, they then relay it to the next
station. At that point, that first station is supposed to say in a message back, okay, I relayed
it to XYZ station at this date and time. And that station is supposed to send me something that says,
okay, I got it from that first station at this date and time. And then when they move it on to
the next station, the same thing happens again. Okay, at this date and time, I sent it off to
that station. And then that station, same thing. At this date and time, I got it. And so every time
it hops, it generates two messages back to whoever introduced it. It's great for tracking emergency
things where you got to know that it's making progress. If it's a happy birthday, you know,
type of thing, do we need that level of tracking on it? It generates a lot of traffic. If everything
was sent with Hotel X-Ray Delta, there would be nothing but acknowledgements moving through the
system. And so we reserve Hotel X-Ray Delta for those really urgent things. Or I've tried sending
messages through and they're just not making it. I want to understand where the clog is.
So let me trace this one and see what's going on. So I would only use Delta
in extreme circumstances. So did I beat that horse? Good. Please don't use that one.
It was really fun when it was used during field day one year. There was a lot of feedback on that
group when they sent all their field day traffic with the tracer instruction on it.
Does the reply go back down the chain or acknowledge to the originator only? So
whether it's a Hotel X-Ray Delta, or let's say it's Hotel X-Ray Charlie,
and you can use more than one of these. It's not like you have to pick one. You could do a bunch
of them. Hotel X-Ray Charlie, report and date and time of delivery back to the originating station.
You would write a radiogram back to whoever that radiogram was from with that information.
And whether it goes back the same exact way that it came to you, or it goes through a completely
different part of the system, it doesn't matter. It just starts making its way back to whoever
introduced that piece of traffic. So yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to
flow exactly back the way it came. It can work through the system through another channel.
Okay, other questions? Throw them in the chat, please. Station of origin. This is effectively
who's filling out the radiogram for the first time. So if you are filling out a radiogram to
a family member, you are the station of origin. If you are filling out the radiogram on behalf
of someone else that wants to put a message into the system, you are the station of origin. You are
the first ham that is filling this in. So your call sign goes in the station of origin. And then
back to that, you know, was it delivered or did I have a question? I know to come back to you,
because you're the station of origin that brought this thing for the first time. And this station
of origin will stay there through the whole journey. It does not change. None of this changes.
Place of origin can be a little trickier. So we'll get to that in a sec. A station of origin
is whoever is filling out the very first radiogram for that for the first time.
The check is basically a way for us to see if any words disappeared or got added to the message.
So it's a count of how many words are in the text. There are some shorthands we can use,
and I'll go into those in a bit. If you use one or more shorthands, then we put A-R-L before the
number to signify we're using shorthands in the message. But if you don't have any shorthands,
then it's just, you know, count. You know, there are nine words in here. So the check is nine.
And I'll show the example of that when I get some real traffic up on the screen.
Place of origin. Okay, here's the curveball. This is the location of the person who authored the
message. So if this is you writing a message to a family member, then it is where you are,
city and state. If it's for you're on the phone with somebody, like I'm here in Dallas,
and let's say I'm on the phone with someone in Fort Worth that wants to send a message,
and I fill in the radiogram, the station of origin is who? It's me. I'm the one that's
filling in the radiogram for the first time. The place of origin is where? Fort Worth.
It's the location of the person who's authoring the text. So that's the fun curveball. Now,
if you put, like if I were to put Dallas instead of Fort Worth, like the system will not implode.
But the place of origin is whoever is is authoring the text. The station of origin
is the first ham that's that's filling out the radiogram.
Time filed is optional, just like the handling instruction is optional.
But you should you should put the time filed. If it's emergency or priority or welfare traffic,
we want to know the age of that in minutes. And also with the hotel x-ray Bravo instruction,
which says, just cancel this if it's not delivered within so many hours. Well,
I don't know how many hours went by. So definitely fill out the time filed for for those
types of things. The traffic system uses universal coordinated universal time. So UTC or Zulu.
If you don't indicate a time zone, then that's what's assumed. Universal time is what's assumed.
If you are going to use the time zone, then make sure you put it in there. So whether that's
central daylight time or eastern daylight time or that type of thing,
then you'd put the time the time zone in there along with the time.
Very rarely, though, is the time filled in. The date, this is really easy. First three letters
of the month and then and the date. So, you know, January, I still say the whole word on the air,
January 1-5, March 3, July 2-2. And notice how I give each number individually. The year is never
included. If you got a piece of traffic that's a year old, then you know, probably, you know,
time to give up on it. But, you know, we don't need the year. You know, these messages aren't
that old. And it just burns time, right? We want to get these moved as efficiently as we can. So
the year doesn't add any value. So we don't bother with it. And again, UTC. And same story, if you
were to list a piece of traffic on a local traffic net, and, you know, it's 1030 p.m. here in Dallas,
it's technically the next day in UTC. But if I if I don't put tomorrow on it, the world, again,
does not end. But if we want to follow the rhythm of it, we would follow whatever universal time is.
Comment in there, thanks for clearing up place origin. Yeah, that's a good time, isn't it?
All right, so here's how I would read the header on the air. And again, this comes down to some net
personalities. And on the Dallas-Fort Worth two meter traffic nets, I'm going to read it like how
we would do it on there. You might find that your local traffic net is just a little bit different.
So again, listen to pick up that net personality is what I like to call that. But I would say this
header just like this, please copy message number 312, routine, Hotel X-Ray, Gulf, Kilo 8, Alpha
Mike Hotel, 1-2, Dallas, Texas, 2-1-4-5, January 1-5. Now notice I don't have to say, okay, the
number is 312, and the precedence is routine, and the station of origin is it. We're all using the
same template. So we all know the order of things. We don't need to say the subject over and over
again. Again, we're trying to move these efficiently, so we don't need to burn time on that.
I did mention that two items are optional, the handling instruction and the time.
So how would I read that if I didn't have those? I just skip them. Please copy number 312, routine,
Kilo 8, Alpha Mike Hotel, 1-2, Dallas, Texas, January 1-5. Again, the other station will know
that there is no handling instruction and there is no time filed. It's one of those rhythm of
the business type of things. We know that those are optional. And so if you don't mention it,
they're not there. And then we can keep moving with things. And comment, that's basically how
the header is read here in Northern Virginia. A lot of this is, if you're really bored someday,
there is a 400-plus page best practices PDF that I just hate. But if you really want to get in
there and read it, there's a lot of reading you can do on traffic. And it's all been built just
based on things learned over time. It's an excellent resource. But if I were to throw it at
you and say, go read this 400-page thing, you're going to get lost. So a lot of this is like the
80% what you're going to see the vast majority of the time. But there is a best practices guide
if you really want to get the big details on good traffic handling. That's the header.
So that's the hard part. We're through it. Any questions on the header?
I will keep moving into the address part next. But again, any questions, throw them in there.
The address is the destinations. There we go. Yeah, methods and practices guide. Yeah, that's
yeah, MPG. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. 400 pages of fun. This is essentially like sending
any letter. First last name, call sign if they have one. Again, they don't necessarily have to
have one. So if you want to send, you know, Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday to a
family member that doesn't have a license, please do. But first last name, call sign if they have
one address, city, state, zip and phone number. The last mile delivery is very much done by phone.
So we ask that you include a phone number. If you include an email, that is an option.
It removes that personal touch, but you know, some folks just don't want their phone number
out there. We'll still deliver it by email. If you do include it, then you need to write it out.
So like for this example, if it was jane.doe at example.com, then it's jane.doe
at sign or at example.com. We spell all of those things out. We don't put, you know,
a period or anything like for that. Because again, you're relaying it on the air. So how do you read,
how do you, how do you say a period? You know, I mean, you would spell it out to indicate there
is a dot there. So here, let's send this one as an example to jane.doe, address and phone number.
And so I would read this like this. I would say that this is to jane. I'm gonna go a little faster
just for sake of time. I would pause to give the other person time to write. So this is going to
jane.doe, I spelled delta oscar echo, amateur call alpha romeo one tango, address figures one two
three, mixed group eight five tango hotel, street, direction southeast, some town wisconsin,
zip figures zero zero one two one, phone figures three three zero, five five five, four four two
four, break. And a break is one of those fun ones. We'll talk about that in a second. This is your
introduction to ProWords. And so in the reference guide, there's a whole list of these, but we'll
cover some of the more common ones here. I spell means you're about to spell something. Good
practice to do that with last names, because they can be fun. Also can be good to do that with first
names. If it's john, is it j-o-n? Is it j-o-h-n? You know, that type of thing. So if it makes sense
to spell it, go for it. But if you're going to spell it, make sure you kind of do that without
pausing. So instead of doe, I spell... the other person's probably already tried to write it down
at that point. So if you're going to spell it, then just go right into spelling it. So
going to Jane, doe, I spell, Delta, Oscar, Echo, you know, and then keep going with it. Amateur
call means you're about to give a call sign. Figures, whether address figures, or zip figures,
or phone figures, you're about to get some some numbers. Mixed group means you're about to give
a mixture of letters and numbers. Directions, really only used in the address. So it's just
there to, you know, Northeast 8th Street, or Southwest this, or that type of thing.
And then break. This usually throws a curveball, because I know a lot of Nets here in the
Metroplex will have in the preamble, if you have emergency or priority traffic, at any time,
say break, break, followed by your call sign. So sometimes it creates this,
well, in this case, break indicates you're pausing. And so you would, you know, read the,
you know, you'd relay the address and phone number and then break. And then you'd let up on push to
talk. And you wait for that other station to come back to you with whether they need any fills.
You know, I need you to repeat this or that type of thing. Or they will say go, or go ahead,
go text. That means you can continue with the radiogram. They have everything. In the comment,
we say break for text for clarity. And we'll have some folks do that here in the Metroplex,
too. They'll say break for text to let you know that they're pausing before they jump into the
text section. Op notes. And so this is not something that's commonly seen, but it can be,
so I'll just mention it. Two places for op notes that they can appear in these. This is the first
one. This one relates to handling or delivery. So in this example, I've put workday only. And so
maybe the phone number I've given is a work phone number. And so why bother calling on the weekend?
This helps that station that's about to do the delivery in this example, to have an idea of when
to try making the phone call. So they're not burning time on, you know, a weekend attempt
that's just, you know, going to lead to voicemail or something like that. Again, operational notes
or op notes are optional, but for this first one, it gives, you know, some help to that
delivering station or to those handling it if there's any extra information that that might
help them when relaying this along. That's the addressee part. If you have questions on that,
throw them in the chat. We'll go into this receiving station info part. This is really easy.
The only time I ever fill this out is if I'm dropping the radiogram in the mail.
This is your station information. And this can be helpful if you're putting it in the mail
and you want that person to know how to get ahold of you if they have any questions or anything like
that. Or if you're in an emergency or something like that, who filled in this radiogram? Then
you put your information there and then that way if there are any follow-up questions,
they know how to get ahold of you. Maybe it's a, we can't read this one word, can you read it for
us? Or, you know, that type of thing. Otherwise, I know my name and my phone number and stuff. I
don't need to fill it in. It's only helpful if I'm going to put it in the mail or something like
that and, you know, someone else is going to be looking at it and if they have questions,
they know how to get ahold of me. So that is virtually always blank for me.
The text is the heart of the message. There are 25 spaces or 25 groups. I like to think of it as
five dollars a word. Going back to that brevity and be concise and to the point,
we want to very effectively relay these through the system and so the longer they are, the more
time they take. If it's worth the extra five or ten dollars, then it's worth it. But if there's
a way to be more concise and still get the message across clearly and effectively, then go for it.
So let's say I wanted to send this. Great seeing you yesterday. Hope to get together again soon,
73. So in radiograms, punctuation, just like in the email, is spelled out. So periods are
written as either the letter x, which we say is initial x-ray, or the whole word x-ray. Both
will work. Others that you might see that aren't too common but they are used on occasion is if
you have a question, the question mark is written as the word query. Exclamation points are written
as exclamation. Not too often, but you're going to see a lot of x-rays in things. That's the
most common one. And so here's how this would translate. Great seeing you yesterday, initial
x-ray. Hope to get together again soon, figures 73. Now I didn't need to put an x-ray between soon
and 73. I can kind of gather that that was the end of the sentence. And so why spend the five bucks
to put a period there when I don't need it? And sometimes I'll still do it and I'm
reading it on the traffic net and I say x-ray figures that I laugh at myself and I'm like,
well that's how I read it, so go for it. But it's like, I guess I had extra five dollars in my
pocket and let's go for it. But if you don't need that x-ray there, then no need to spend
the five bucks type of thing. If it helps clarify things, I would include it. So if it was like a
date, right, if it was on August 10, 73, then I would put an x-ray there. I'd spend the five bucks
to make sure there's some clarity. On August, figures 1-0, initial x-ray, figures 7-3.
Just gives that extra clarity that the 73 is not part of the year or that, you know, whatever might
be next to it type of thing. Question in the chat, your responsibility to help format the message.
So whether I'm filling it out for myself or on behalf of someone else, I own filling in the
radiogram. I'm the one that's introducing it and making it for the first time. So I own whatever
words get in there because as soon as I relay it on the air, ideally that's exactly how it's going
to arrive on the other end. So when you're putting the message together, you know, go for brevity
and things to, you know, to make sure the message moves effectively through the system. And, you
know, if you have a word, if you were to send supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on a radiogram,
I would really look at you like, why? You know, but in other words, you know, go for simplicity,
but still get the point across. If you're moving a radiogram that says we need
methotrexate like a medication, well, then that's worth it to say methotrexate. You're not going to
simplify it any further than that as a medication, right? But, you know, again, try and be, you know,
concise and efficient with your traffic when you go to author it before you bring it to the system.
Questions on 73. Is it figure 73 or 73? When we have numbers in the text like this, we use the
pro word figures to indicate that it's a number. And then we say each digit individually. So it's
figures 73. We give each number individually. I mean, otherwise, you could you could get the,
you know, if you say, you know, 146, or, you know, 146, or what, we want to standardize how
we do that. And we want to do it in a way where we're going to make sure each number gets there
clearly. So we give them one at a time, each digit individually. Do you have to get the sender's
approval of the message? If it was an ICS 213, and you're working in an emergency operations center
or something, then yeah, there's going to be someone that signs off on it. If you are authoring
your own message, then you approve your own message type of thing. If you're on the phone
with somebody and they want to send, you know, happy birthday, you know, type of thing, and you
decide that you could say that in the shorthand, or, you know, that type of thing, you don't
necessarily need to get their okay to say, well, I'm going to take that period out because we don't
need it or, you know, that type of thing. You know, a lot of this is just, you know, good judgment
on, you know, if someone's telling you, tell them, you know, tell them I'm glad to hear from them,
and that I hope they're doing well. Well, you know, you can, you know, put that in the message
right along those lines. You know, I am glad to hear from you. I am doing well. You know,
I wouldn't cut it in half or anything like that. You know, try and follow what they're giving you.
But the way I would do it on the phone is they'll tell me kind of what it is they want to say.
And sometimes they're making it up as they say it. So it's not, you know, exactly ready, but
I will type it out. And then when they're done, I'll say, okay, here's what I'm going to send.
And then they'll go, okay, great. Or, well, can you add or, you know, that's kind of their sign
off type of thing, just to verify that I've got everything that they wanted to say in that. So
hopefully that gives you a good answer there. We'll keep moving. When you're putting the check
together, things like x-ray and query count as a word when you're filling in the check. So if you
look at what we've got on the text here, it's 12. Great seeing you yesterday. Initial x-ray are the
first five. Hope to get together again are the next five. Soon figure 73 are the last two. So
the check here is 12. And when I read that as part of the header, I would say one, two.
And we'll put this all in the radiogram so you can see it all as a big picture.
Again, I would pause between words, but, you know, for sake of time. Great seeing you yesterday.
Initial x-ray. Hope to get together again soon. Figures 73. Break. So some more pro words that
we can have here. Initials, or some say letter group, means you're about to give initials.
Break. Break for a signature, because the signature is next. Again, we're giving that
pause to see if that other station needs any fills. I need you to say again word after hope,
or please spell yesterday, or, you know, things like that. If you get the please say all again
after yesterday, that's a good sign you might have went a little too fast, and they just gave
up. So slow down the next time. Affirmative or negative is much better than yes or no,
because it's longer, so we have less chance of misinterpreting it type of thing. So affirmative
or negative. And then correction, if you did make a mistake, then you can just say correction,
and then whatever the correction is. You know, so great seeing you initial x-ray. Correction.
Yesterday. I say again great seeing you yesterday. Initial x-ray. It gets you into that rhythm of
putting that correction in and keeping things following. So the last part now, what if I'm a
bad speller? Well, when you read it over the air, we won't know how you spelled it. We'll just know
how you said it. But if someone asks you to spell something like methotrexate, right, try and get it
right. But if something is introduced with a misspelling, and that's how it's handed to you
as it's in transit, then relay it exactly as you got it. We're not in the middle of this
to change the message while it's in transit, right? This is not the time for the telephone game
where I start with, you know, I need two cases of bottled water, and it ends with I need five
one-gallon jugs of iced tea or, you know, something. So if it has a mistake in it or things,
move it along just as you got it. I wouldn't change anything like that. So if something comes
in with a spelling mistake, it'll move through the system like that. As long as we know what
it's saying, then we're okay. The signature. So this is the last part that would generally
be filled out. It's below the text and above the sent and received info with no label.
So it's just kind of one of those we-know-it-goes-there types of things.
Generally, it's your name and your call sign if you have one. So in my case, it's Aaron K8AMH.
This is how I would finish this message on the air. I would say,
signed. So I've read the text, I break, the other station says, go ahead. I would say,
signed, Aaron, amateur call, Kilo 8, Alpha Mike Hotel, end, number 312, no more, how copy?
So, end means that's the end of the radiogram. Book traffic, we'll talk about in a second.
No more is just how many you have left to relay to that station. So if you're like, I have three
that are going to Michigan, then I would read the first one, I would say, end, number whatever that
was, two more, how copy this one? And then the other station knows we still have some more to go.
How copy, so did you copy it successfully? And then, you know, Roger, I Roger your number 312,
good copy on 312, something like that, is how you'd know the other station
has everything successfully. Now, this is the second place where op notes can appear.
This is more commonly used, this is related to replies or servicing. And so for example,
could have Aaron, Kiloweight Alpha Mike Hotel, op note, reply or service to KE5YTA.
Effectively, what this is saying is, if you have a reply that you need to send to me,
send it to me via KE5YTA, and his name's Roger. So the message would go to Roger. And I'll show
this in a real radiogram of how this works. This is good for, like for Peter in Germany,
how we get the messages back to him. So the last part of this is your tracking. So everything we've
talked about so far, aside from the receiving station info, will not change in the radiogram
ever. This will stay the same as it moves through the system. The received and sent info, this is
for your tracking. Who did you get it from and who did you send it to? And so let's say I sent
to Roger. I would put KE5YTA. I like to track what net I was on when I did that. That's optional,
but that's just a little piece of extra info for me. And again, I use UTC here, you know,
with the date and the time that I relayed it. And that way, if I need to go back and try and follow
its journey, I have my records. Roger will have his records, and we can start tracing it
through the system. So this is how this radiogram looks from everything that we've built up. So let
me zoom in on it so we have a little bit better view. So the number precedence, we had no handling
instructions, so that's blank. The origin is me, check of 12 Dallas, where it's headed, the message,
signature, and then who I relayed it to after, you know, I moved it on the traffic net.
Are there any questions on this example? And I'll buy you some time. I did not receive an
email with the radiogram download or print. Okay, so if you go to k8amh.com forward slash
handouts. Oh, is that plural? Let me go find out because I don't remember.
Um, if the browser will open.
I think it's plural. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Sean. Yeah.
So I'll go ahead and let this open slowly for some reason.
Come on, internet. There we go. You'll find the reference guide here on the left, and then I've
got two copies of the radiogram forms. One that is not fillable, the other one that is. So if
you prefer to fill it out on screen, then you've got it. Great. Any other questions or anything,
feel free to throw them in there. What if we have the same message going to more than one person?
So let's say it's, you know, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And I'm sending it to three
different people. We call that book traffic. It's just a nice way of saying that, well,
the message itself is the same. I just have it going to different people. And then when I go to
relay it on the air, I only need to read the text once. And then I just give the destination
separately. Each radiogram still has its own number. So if I had, you know, three going to
family members in Michigan, then, you know, if it was 312 is the first one, then the second one is
313, and the next one is 314. And then the address information would change, right, different
destination, but the rest of it's the same. So I would relay this. There's two ways you could do
it. One is where you just give the common parts, the parts that appear the same in all of them.
In Dallas, we read the first radiogram all the way through the first time. So we start with
number 312, routine, kilo-weight albumin, 2, Jane Doe, great seeing you, sign. And then the next one,
we would say, okay, the next one in the book is number 313, and it's going to John Smith,
123 Fake Street, and number 313, one more in the book, a copy. And then the next one would be 314
going to, you know, Jane Smith, you know, type of thing. So again, listen to that net personality.
But we don't need to read the whole header. We don't need to read the text over again or things
in the comment, great for your field day traffic, book of 10. Yeah, it's just more, you know, speedy
type of thing. It helps speed up moving things. And you think about the, you know, ARL 56,
new amateur radio license, welcome to the hobby, enjoy the fun and friendships you will make,
right? If, you know, someone like Lauren, November 1, India, Quebec, India, or Chris,
November X-ray 9 kilo, and Jim, you know, are sending the same greetings that we just put that
through as book traffic, only have to read the message once, and then we can go through all the
destinations type of thing. Okay, I talked about shorthands. So we'll dive in these in a bit.
Here's an example of where a shorthand is used. And so this is real, I just, I took out the name.
ARL 56, new amateur radio license, welcome to the hobby, enjoy the fun and friendships you will
make, 73. Fun how you just memorize those over time. We're using a shorthand here,
because this does mean something, and it's in your handout, the ARL numbered radiograms.
They provide a way for us to send common phrases very quickly. When you deliver it to the other
end, of course, you're going to say what it means. Like I wouldn't say, okay, you got a message,
this is ARL 50. You know, they're not going to know what that means, so tell them what it means.
And then in the check, we indicate that we have a shorthand in use. And so the check of 1-2,
you know, example would become Alpha Romeo Lima 1-2. Again, to flag the fact that we've used
a shorthand. Here are some common ones. You have the full list of them in the handout.
ARL 50, greetings by amateur radio. 56, congratulations on your, and then whatever,
most worthy and deserved achievement. For servicing, if we want to tell a station we
delivered their message, then it's ARL 47, and then we give the number and the destination and
the date and time of delivery. If we couldn't deliver it, then ARL 67, and then we give the
message number and maybe some other details, and then we explain why. You know, phone number,
out of service, or no answer, you know, that type of thing. So when we look at this example,
ARL 56, new amateur radio license, becomes congratulations on your, and this is the blank,
so what follows this shorthand here, you know, new amateur radio license, initial x-ray,
that's what goes in the blank. So congratulations on your new amateur radio license, a most worthy
and deserved achievement. Welcome to the hobby. Enjoy the fun and friendships you will make.
73. That would be how I would deliver it to its destination.
We spell out the numbers in these shorthands, and this is to help clarify that
this is part of the shorthand. So I would read this as initials, Alpha, Romeo, Lima,
50, I spell, Foxtrot, India, Foxtrot, Tango, Yankee, six, I spell, Sierra, India, x-ray.
We're spelling them to call out the fact that they are spelled out words rather than like
figure 7-3, right? We want to clarify that these are written out words rather than
some digits, and so that's why we spell them out like that.
Some other quick examples, and then we can do maybe a little bit of hands-on.
Let me zoom in on this just for fun. So ARL50, John, and congrats on new amateur radio license.
X-ray, enjoy all that the radio community offers. X-ray, best regards. ARL50,
remember what that is? It's greetings by amateur radio. And so that's how greetings by amateur
radio, John, and congrats on it. Here we have the op note that Peter includes.
So he signs it, Peter, DL4FN, op note reply or service message to him through Roger in Richardson,
Texas. And so what this means, I see someone recognizes Peter's messages in the chat. What
this means is that to send something back to Peter, so like if that other station wants to
say thank you and hope to hear you on the air or whatever their reply is, or if it's I couldn't
deliver it because the phone number is disconnected, I would send the reply to Peter, DL4FN,
care of Roger, K-E-5-Y-T-A, in Richardson, Texas. So I won't send it to Germany. I'm going to route
it to Roger here in Dallas, because Peter has asked Roger here in Dallas to act as kind of
his liaison to get the messages back to him in Germany. So I'm going to send it back to
Roger, and then Roger will relay it across to Peter. If that makes sense, how this op note
works at the end. Again, this is relating to, you know, the replies or service messages.
We're going to still send this reply to Peter, but we're going to route it to Roger, because
that's who Peter's designated here in the U.S. for receiving, for working, you know, those replies
back to him in Germany. Same thing here on this one. Peter's got the op note, you know,
hello Gary, congrats on your new amateur license, you know, that type of thing. And these are ones
I put in the mail, because I choose if I can't get a hold of them on the phone, then I mail them.
It's a personal choice. And I fill out these details here in the, you know, the receive box,
so that if they have any questions, they know how to get a hold of me. And I put a little
letter with an explanation to just saying, you know, this is part of traffic handling,
and here's what the message says, and that type of thing. All right, so we'll do a little hands-on.
Let's say you're going to send something to me. There's my address and phone number,
and you're going to send, hope to hear you on the band soon, and 73. So go ahead and take some time,
if you've got your blank radiogram printed out. And if it's, you can make up the number,
one or 500, or however you want to do that. But I'll give you a couple minutes. And in the meantime,
if folks have questions, feel free to throw them in the chat. Again, more fuel, getting a little
cooler, but I'll still work on it. Okay, we'll give you another minute here. So again, any questions,
feel free to throw them in the chat. The handling instructions definitions list,
excuse me, so that is also in the handout. So why don't I open it here,
and we'll kind of walk through it very, very quickly. So at the beginning of this phonetic
alphabet, because again, the gold standard, and then the handling instructions, and what they all
mean. Precedences, so again, priority welfare emergency, and then common prosigns that are used
in traffic handling. And then that's followed by the ARL shorthands. And there are two blocks of
these. The first group is generally emergency related, you know, like supplies requests or
comments on damage to the area or things. Group two is more for the routine-y things.
You know, greetings by amateur radio, greetings on your birthday,
you know, holiday greetings, and things like that. Other questions? So from a big picture,
how do I initiate a message from a local level and get it to a regional relay? So the way it'll
work, we'll go through this in the net discussion, is you'll bring it to a local traffic net,
and then someone else that's also checked into that traffic net will be able to act as that bridge
to a regional or area net, and then they'll take that there and move it there. And that's how it'll
jump across. I think it'll become a little bit clearer when we get into the... pardon me,
get into the... how the traffic nets work here in just a second. But that's kind of a quick answer,
is when you bring it to the local level, you'll have folks that can take things to
the regional area or things, and that's how it'll keep going. Yeah, there'll be liaisons to other
nets. Yeah, we're going to walk through that. Yeah. All right. So let's keep moving. If you
don't have it quite filled out, that's okay. This is effectively how it should look.
So whatever number you put, and then routine, your call sign, a check of nine or a niner,
your city and state, today's date, then my address and phone number, and then one word in each blank,
hope to hear you on the band soon, figure seven three, and then your name and your call sign here
in this little tiny spot. Anybody have any questions on how we filled it out this way,
or if you had something a little different, or anything that I can clarify on this?
I'll give you about 30 seconds, and then we'll jump in a little bit. We got a little bit more
to go. We're not doing horrible on time. We've got maybe another 10, maybe 15 minutes. I added
an initial x-ray. So again, so that's the comment. I added an initial x-ray in the chat.
So if you put an x-ray between soon and 73, you can do that. Is it necessary? Not necessarily. I
know the sentence ended here at soon. If you put it, you can put it. But I personally like to save
the five dollars, and so I don't put an x-ray there for a period. Another question, what's the
rationale for place of origin? So again on this, this is the location of whoever authored this
text. The rationale for that, yeah. So this is so that we know where the message came from.
Because again, if you are the station of origin, like if I'm filling it out, and I'm in Dallas,
the people that are authoring that message are in Fort Worth. And if I say, I need five
cots at Mercy Hospital, Mercy Hospital in Fort Worth, or Mercy Hospital in Dallas, or Mercy
Hospital. It just helps provide some of that clarity, first off. And then also, as Darwin's
put in there, I think it's to help replies go back to the proper local net. It does help with
routing, because we've got that clue in there of where we can head it back to for its destination.
But when we think about emergency traffic or things, just, you know, where did this come from?
You know, Kilo 8 Alpha Mike Hotel, that's an 8. So this must have come from Michigan or West
Virginia or something, right? No, it's coming from Dallas, Texas. And so, you know, if I don't have
access to the FCC ULS, the, you know, Universal Licensing System, or things like QRZ to look up
addresses, then this is my clue. Place of origin, at least for me, when I sent it,
would be Dallas, Texas. And that's how you'd know how to route it back to me type of thing.
Yeah, other questions on this? Feel free to throw them in the chat. I'm gonna
keep rolling just to try and keep conscious of time here.
So now on traffic nets, I won't dive into this too much. It's pretty much like any other net you've
hopefully joined where you get the preamble, you know, welcome to the traffic net. My name is and
I'm your net control station. And I will now take check-ins from stations with traffic, which means
you're bringing a radiogram that you want to introduce into the system or relay through the
system. And then you can take check-ins from stations without traffic, which means I don't
have any radiograms to relay, but I'm here if you need help relaying things. And then after that,
the relaying begins. Two stations will connect together on the air. And then this is... I'm
doing this as a voice net because that's how many folks here at Dallas get started on traffic nets
is at the local level. You know, if it's a CW net or things, you know, you follow similar.
Here's how a net control could log things. For this one, I was the one that was running the net.
And so, of course, I tracked myself as the as the net control station. Next, we had Calvin
check in. He brought a piece of traffic for Bowie, Texas. Then Don, W9BE, checked in. He acted as a
liaison for TEX, the Texas Traffic Net, which that for me as a net control station tells me
an option on how to route traffic out of Dallas-Fort Worth. I have this option for moving
traffic out of the area. Same thing with Roger, K85YATA. He interfaces with the digital traffic
net. And if I have to send something Michigan, Wisconsin, you know, Washington State, something,
then I know that Roger is an option to move things out of the area through the digital traffic net.
Same with John. Roger, in this case, brought a book of five. So it's the same text and things
going to five different destinations. Two of those were in Dallas, one in Plano, one in Prosper,
one in Melissa. And then John also had his a book of three, separate book, but book of three.
And then he had one and another one that's not part of the book.
And then last, Corky checked in with a net report, which is how we turn in our statistics
and they get reported to me and then I report them to our headquarters. But how do we turn
in those net reports? Well, through a radiogram. So, okay, let me turn off the pointer and we'll
keep moving. So the way this would work is after figuring out who can route what,
the net control station would have those two stations connect, you know, and say, okay, I'm,
they would read the header and the address and phone number and then break.
And then I would either say, please say again, phone number, or please say again,
city, or please spell city. Or when I'm ready to go, I would say, go, go text, go ahead.
Other station would then read the text section one word at a time, and then break. And then I
would say, you know, please say again, word after blah, or go, go ahead, go signature,
then they would read the signature, you know, sign some da da da, end number, whatever,
no more or one more, how copy, I Roger your number, whatever, you know, thanks for the traffic
and then K8AMH, and they, you know, thank you for taking that and ID and then turn it back to net
control. That's how, that's how you would flow. I see the questions on how to get involved. I'll
jump into that in just a second. So the way I would move this is I would say, please copy my
number three, and I'm going to go fast. Please copy my number 312, routine, K8AMH, 1-2, Dallas,
Texas, January 1-5, to Jane Doe, amateur call, Alfa Romeo 1-Tango, address figures 1-2-3,
mixed group 8-5 Tango Hotel, street, direction southeast, some town Wisconsin, zip figures
0-0-1-2-1, phone figures 3-3-0-5-5-5-4-4-2-4, break, and the other station go ahead, great
seeing you yesterday, initial x-ray, hope to get together again soon, figures 7-3, break,
and the other station would say go, signed Aaron, amateur call, Kilo 8, Alfa Mike Hotel,
number 312, and no more, I'll copy. And the other, I copy, Roger, you're 312,
thanks for the traffic, thanks for taking K8AMH back to NET. So that's how we would
move that on the air. How do you get involved in the traffic nets? I would recommend finding,
if possible, a local traffic net in your area. The ARRL, main webpage, ARRL.org,
has a NET database that you can search. And let me make a note, I will put that in my follow-up email,
how to search local NETs. And you can find local NETs and regional NETs and things,
and then get involved that way. Find the NET at your local level, or if not available, find a
regional or area NET on HF. Again, listen, I recommend you listen in the beginning, get a feel
for that NET and how it flows, and then you can start jumping in and participating. I know, like,
for example, here at the 7290 traffic net, the first time you check in and, you know, participate
in the NET, even if you don't move any traffic, they send you a radiogram thanking you for finding
them and for jumping in on the NET. They're very happy to hear from folks that join in.
Lots of good NETs and lots of excitement when folks want to jump in type of thing.
Okay, great presentation. We got Aaron and Justin here in Discord to do a demo for us.
So I'll let you guys take it from here, and we'll do some questions afterwards. Go ahead.
All right, I'll take it, I guess. Everybody, thanks for jumping in. We'll do a couple of
practice radiograms here. If you've printed them out from the handouts page, and I promise I'll go
nice and slow. You could give this a spin to see how it flows for you when filling out the radiogram,
and then if there's any questions on, well, what happened there, or what did that mean,
or those types of things, we've got some time here to take questions. So hopefully I've bought
enough time for folks to get their blank radiograms handy. I'll just go ahead and start
doing this. If this works, or do you want to do questions first, let me double check
to make sure I'm good to go with the relaying. Let's go ahead. All righty, then we'll go ahead
and get started. And this will be number 809-routine, Kilo 8 Alpha Mike Hotel,
1-4, Dallas, Texas, August 9-r, to your station. That's how we would do that on the air
when it's going to the recipient is the same ham. So going to your station,
break. This is where somebody would say go. So I'll assume I gotta go. Thank you for attending
today. Hope to get some traffic
from you soon. Figures 7-3, break. And again, I, you know, say again or something, but you know,
go, you know, we'll do go signature. That's signed Aaron Amateur Call, Kilo 8 Alpha Mike Hotel.
End number 809-r, and no more. I'll copy.
And so hopefully that first, hopefully I was slow enough. So yeah, I learned with some stations,
I can go faster than with others. And so I try to adjust the speed based on that.
I don't know if we can throw that one up on the screen.
Yeah, you're ready for the reveal?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure thing. And then if any questions on, well, why did that go there? Or
that was really confusing. How come this? Or, you know, that type of thing.
Yeah, definitely wanted to give that clarity type of thing. Or if you're experts, then you
could take Justin. And, you know, we'll double check that, you know, things are good. And then
we had some questions during the presentation part. I want to jump in on those as well. And
if any other questions type of thing. Otherwise, silence is acceptance.
Let's go to Justin's demo here.
Sure. All right. Well, yep, I have one more if you want to try it again. And again, as they say,
every NAT usually has their own personality. So mine might sound a little bit different.
So I'll go ahead and get started. Please copy message number one, three, routine,
kilo, echo, eight, Mike, Yankee, Foxtrot, one, eight, Grand Rapids, I spell Romeo, Alpha, Papa,
India, Delta, Sierra, Michigan, August 9. Going to your station. Break.
Go.
All right.
Thanks
for
attending
this
talk.
And
hope
to, I spell Tango Oscar,
C,
I spell Sierra, Echo, Echo,
U,
all
at
mixed group,
Delta, Charlie,
two, niner,
initial X-ray,
hack,
the
planet,
figures 73. Break.
Go ahead.
Signed
Justin, amateur call,
kilo, echo, eight, Mike,
Yankee, Foxtrot, end message number
one, three, no more, how copy?
Roger, one, three, thanks for the traffic.
It's that, Debbie, we do it here.
Yeah.
Very good, let's do a reveal
on that.
Here we go, that's what
it should look like.
All right, yeah, so on that one, we
also had a mixed group in there with a
DC-29, that's another thing to keep
out. And when I mentioned
the word two, I made sure to spell
it out, just so it's 100%
accurate, and someone didn't write
Tango Oscar Oscar on accident,
they would spell Tango Oscar.
So that's, when there's words like that,
it's always important to make sure you spell those out.
Very
good, we'll leave this up here for a few seconds
and go to Q&A.
I guess let's go
there now. So, let's
go to the chats.
Hit up Discord,
Presentation Chat, or
Twitch, and we'll get some questions.
But I guess first,
you wanted to go over questions from the
video, so go ahead, Aaron.
Oh, okay. All right, we had
two that came up during that.
First one,
do you know if and how other local
and section traffic nets discourage
use of the Internet or
national traffic system relay? So
the heart of that question really is
how does the Internet play
in with relaying
traffic? And I mean,
you could think of that as
Echo Link, or
maybe if you're on All Star, or
something like that, where you're leveraging
the Internet for moving things.
From the national traffic system
side, we really want things
to go over the air.
We are preparing for
when infrastructure
is not available.
And sometimes you get the pushback
of, well, when will that really happen?
And you know,
T-Mobile,
third party,
had an issue on their end, and it disrupted
cellular communications, essentially
across the board.
That's the scenario
we're preparing for. And so
if we get into the habit of,
well, I've got to relay this traffic
from Dallas to, you know,
I don't know, Washington, or California, or
Massachusetts, or something. And it's, well,
I'll just hop on Echo Link and go over the Internet and do that.
And we built that
habit of, we're just going to use the Internet.
And when things really do hit the fan,
and we've got to go over the air,
you kind
of have to now start
getting into that over-the-air
HF handling. That's not the time we want
to do that. We want to practice that now
and build that muscle memory now
so that when the event
does happen, we can just flow
into it and run with it.
And by using HF now,
if there is a
piece of traffic that stalls or
something like that,
we can investigate and understand
and improve the traffic system so that
we're ready
to roll when something does happen. If we
try to shortcut that and use the Internet, well,
I couldn't get over HF, so I just dived on the
Internet. And we haven't really
addressed what's going on.
Internet, some
independent traffic nets
use Echo Link or things,
but from the ARL side,
we really wanted to move over the air to reflect
a real-world situation type
of thing.
If that hopefully provides the clarity there,
if there's something I can
clarify a little further, feel free to
throw it in the discussion.
The other question we had
was, international radiograms
are always in English.
For traffic originating
in the U.S.,
the
common language that's over the air for us
is English, because that's one of the
common languages here in the U.S.
If I had something that
entered the system,
let's say in Spanish, I'm in
Dallas, that would be a good candidate
for another language I might have.
If I had no other option,
I had no interpreters of
things, and my
quasi-Spanish skills could make it
work, then
I would try my
best to try and make that move.
Now, there's some
assumptions that happen with that,
that the people that get that along the way
are going to be able to do the same thing.
That's the risk when you
start taking traffic
in a language other
than English.
The thing
has got to keep moving, and you have
to move it within the system that really
the majority
of us are all speaking English.
If you want to amplify that
example even further, what if it was
Chinese or Japanese
or something, right?
That just adds even more
complexity to things.
When we're moving traffic here
in the U.S., and the national traffic system
against U.S. and Canada,
English is the language
that's commonly used for that,
and drives
the very, very, very, very, very vast
majority of traffic. I have not encountered
anything that wasn't in English.
And if it's headed to
Peter in Germany,
I know I've had some traffic from
Great Britain, so it'll be English.
But things moving in and out, it's
English.
Very good.
Let's go
to the chats. Twitch
and Discord, everybody, throw your questions
out there. We'll get
Aaron to answer for us.
I think the talk was so
good, everything was answered.
And then I think
you had the two big questions just there, so
we'll keep it open here
for a minute. It is very...
it's kind of like, okay,
here's the fire hose, and
enjoy.
So I
give this talk
once a month. My next one is
this coming
Saturday.
K8AMH.com
forward slash events. I have
some folks that take it a couple of times
where
the first time is,
all right, I'm ready to be overwhelmed.
And then you kind of have some time
to kind of digest.
But then come back
to the next one, and you go, oh, yeah,
I remember that. Or, oh, okay.
It's just kind of the frame of reference changes.
if this is kind of
like, oh, my,
holy crap, this is a bunch.
You're welcome
to jump back in again, of course, type of thing.
There's definitely
a lot to absorb.
It's not something
that's learned in 10 minutes. It's
something that's built in time. That muscle memory
gets built with time.
Does this
system get used for QSL
card equivalent sometimes?
Yes. We'll get traffic sometimes
that, you know,
great hearing you on HF
or something along that line type of thing.
Hope to hear from you
again or those types of things.
It's something
that moves across the traffic system.
We get
those types of
radiograms. We get the
happy birthday, merry Christmas. We get the
welcome to the hobbies or
ask about
areas in your area or those types
of things.
We've had a couple of things that we're doing here
to help with generating
some variety in traffic too that
I can quickly mention. One's a
trivia program where once a week
there's a new question that comes up.
And you
can send in your answer for
points and the points are just
kind of, you know, why not? I'll get some statistics.
But, you know, say
you got five right in the last
couple months or that type of thing.
But you send your answers
as radiograms to the traffic system.
And I get
to see how long it takes too. So it gives me some
data points to say, well, how is this system working
and did that take, you know, one day or
two days? And on average it takes two days for things
to move across the country.
But if you get that occasional, why did that take
two weeks? Then you have the opportunity
to understand and
try and improve things to
make it better for next time type of thing.
ntstrivia.com is the place
for that one. And
I also have a pen pal program
where I kind of hook you up with another
traffic handler and you kind of
start the conversation of getting to
know each other through radiograms
type of thing. So it's exactly pen pals, except
instead of letters in the mail, it's traffic
through the traffic system. And
that's at ntspenpal.com.
I should probably put those
addresses in the chat areas.
Might be helpful.
So why
don't I do that? We'll throw that in chat
and definitely include it in
the metadata for the video.
Thank you, Aaron. Thank you,
Justin. I think we're out of time.
Let's
give a virtual round
of applause. That was an amazing presentation.
Definitely a lot to absorb.
I hope this
system gets used more. I'd definitely
like to see some more radiograms
in my local area.
That's very great. Thank you.
Perfect. Thanks, everybody. And if you have
any questions, k8mh
at arl.net. Feel free.
Everyone have a great day.
Thank you.