There should not be any difficulty getting messages into the NTS in most areas. This fall we had several nearby tornadoes. One about 4 miles from our QTH and the other about 20 miles. My wife (also a ham) passed on a message to me that one of the victims wanted sent to Alaska. It went out a few hours later on one of the NTS nets.
Most states should have a number of entry points for NTS traffic. Our state has HF voice nets in the morning, at noon, and late afternoon, plus a Novice net and later a Slow Speed net on CW later on and then the higher speed CW nets at 7 pm and 10 pm. I would like to see more digital activity, but I have not been able to find anysection interest at all. In fact, as active as our section is in traffic handling, we do not even participate in the NTS/D and even more surprising is that our Region Net does not either. I have never been able to understand this lack of interest since it would be a way of getting traffic through under even horrific conditions when even CW can be iffy. And that assumes you have enough competent CW operators and from what I have heard, the pool is shrinking. Perhaps I was naive, but I really thought that as the older hams became silent keys, the newer hams who may not be as interested in CW, would be more interested in digital traffic. One of the attractions for nets though is the camaraderie you have on voice and even CW and which doesn't seem to come across quite the same way on digital modes which are more "arms length" or distant. But unlike conventional nets that require real time participation, digital nets should have a real advantage if they time shifted by the use of mail box systems. The Winlink 2000 system can do some of this but of course it is really not amateur radio for the bulk of the system and there is no guarantee that it can remain operational during wide spread emergencies. Having a serious, decentralized network would go a long ways to making amateur radio relevant again for this kind of messaging. With the advent of a number of new digital technologies this past year, particularly PSKmail and JNOS2, maybe someday we could see some kind of ham digital network develop. 73, Rick, KV9U John Becker wrote: > This is true Dave *IF* you can get one of them onto > the NTS circuit. > > > > Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to telnet://208.15.25.196/ Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
