The future of the National Traffic System

The future of the National Traffic System

"The future of the National Traffic System
Steve Bonine (KB9X) on October 12, 2005

For those of you who may not know, the National Traffic System (NTS) consists of a carefully choreographed collection of section, region, and area nets designed to relay messages throughout the US. In a sense it's the second R in ARRL.

NTS has a long and honorable history and has some of the best operators in the world as its membership.

The recent hurricane season has raised serious doubts for me about the role that NTS plays in the current ham-radio environment. I did not hear a single health-and-welfare message during the disasters. In bygone times, NTS would have been buzzing with activity.

My hands-on experience on the Gulf coast demonstrated a couple of reasons for this lack of traffic. First, responders were discouraged or even prohibited from soliciting such traffic, and non-NTS nets often refused to accept it. (I can understand not accepting incoming H&W traffic if there's no way to deliver it, but having a so-called traffic net refuse traffic because it's not emergency demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the whole concept of prioritizing traffic.) Second, there are other means available to people in the affected areas for getting word out to concerned relatives - at the Red Cross shelter, I observed that residents could check out cell phones and use them as they wished. "


73 fer nw,
Bob N5IET

(old calls KE5CTY - WB5ZQU - WY5L)
10X# 37210, FP#-1141, SMIRK#-5177
http://www.qsl.net/ke5cty/
Code may be taking a back seat for now,
but the pioneering spirit that put the code
there in the first place is out front of it all.