 All righty, and then we can go ahead and get rolling here and I'll just again say welcome everybody. Thank you so much for for joining in today's session on the national traffic system in the 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 and keep an eye on the system to see if there's any 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 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 Racy's 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 operation center and I just kind of said, I don't know what you're talking about and so that started my journey into, you know, what is the radiogram format and and and how does it fit in the 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 but and now I kind of oversee things and again try to pass the knowledge along so again thanks much for for joining in. Let's see if this thing is 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 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 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 as they come in. Alrighty, 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 ARL formed was to move these messages across across the country. And so if you get that random jeopardy question of what is the relay and ARL, I guess now you know the answer, but this is how the league got started and and, you know, 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, you know, I need a generator now, or I need diesel for the generator in five hours or the, you know, the hospital is going to have a big problem and I'm trying to summarize it, but yeah, those types of things also specific structures like evacuate area or, you know, those types of things. Thankfully, we don't get a lot of emergency traffic on the traffic system so 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 or, you know, 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 hey, 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. You know, 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 U.S. and Canada and we do have the ability to move traffic internationally through the system overall. I know Peter, the L4FN 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 too. Third party agreement supply. So you're not sending traffic to North Korea as far as I know. And 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, some Morse code on then digital, such as the digital traffic network, which I know with the way 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 activities. 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 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 the 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 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 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 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 onto 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 message, 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 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 making sure that that message actually reaches the recipient because if the phone call, you get a busy signal or something, we try again. Whereas with the email, we just kind of send it and 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 that are about to expire, just kind of depends 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 10th, please be sure to renew if you haven't yet or, you know, those types of things. Those types of messages are good because it helps introduce new hams to the hobby to here's a whole another 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 FTA 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 time so 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, 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 giant wall of mud comes sliding down the hillside and takes out square miles of land. And now you have 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 imagine you're trying to write it down on the other end, we need six cases of water and 12 cuts and five, you know, the other person's 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, Michael Tell, and my name's Aaron and I'm in North Dallas and I have no traffic, but 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. And then that applies with Skyworn nets. I don't know how many folks have jumped in on Skyworn nets and you always get that one that 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. 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 cloud rotation. And so you get that feel from the net control station by listening and Brenna'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, how the traffic nets run. ITU phonetics, they're the gold standard. So Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot. If you're on a local net that's focused 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, 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. Pro words. Say again, you're a traffic or correction or iRoger, these types of pro words not only apply to traffic handling, but they're used generally in on-air communication. So whether that's public safety dispatchers, if you've ever worked with police or fire or that type of thing, it's the same thing. Can you repeat your traffic please or 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 pro words in a bit. Alternate phonetics are frustrating. Always fun when you're working with the PD and it's Adam Boyking. And if you say, you know, alfabravo kilo, they kind of look at you and they're like, sorry, I just used what everybody else uses. But yeah, alfabravo. 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 sky war net and you've got cloud rotation, you know, it's not time for, 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. 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, and 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 in areas are our sister programs and ARL's public safety programs type of thing. If you're moving to 13s 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 to 13s 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. And 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 preparing anymore. You are reacting, right? And so for folks that, you know, I know I get the tin foil 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. Oh, mistakes. And we'll talk about that here. 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 as 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. 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 and 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. It's, 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 when mistakes happen, that's when learning occurs. And that's how we build those skills. So if you have folks that, how do I overcome that fear, jump in. 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, that could go for quite a bit. And it's, you know, can be kind of boring as you're starting out. So here I'll take an opportunity to fuel for a bit. And then if no questions, we'll jump into the radiogram. And mistakes are always, all right. So the comment in the chat. So for the recording that, you know, folks know our local DS also training that mistakes are always welcome. Yeah, we try to help folks learn and grow in that type of thing. And even, you know, maybe it's a, let's just talk offline by email real fast. And let me help clarify type of thing. Yeah, it's always our goals with the 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 is still the same thing why ICS 213 is the general message form. It's the standardized message format that we're all using. So whether the radiograms here in the US 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 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 that it's destination. It's like, well, I 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, awesome. 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 most, 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 the 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 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 I learn it better that way for me. And so same thing with net controlling when I started it was written down. 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 recycle them, right? So what you're supposed to do or that type of thing. That's a good question. Get any others throw them in there. We'll continue precedence. This is back to that. What's the urgency of this thing? Emergency priority, well for a 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, 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'll 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 put that in the system to say 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 of time. And then when they move it on to the next station, the same thing happens again. Okay, at this date of time, I sent it off to that station. And then that station, same thing at this date of 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 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 acknowledgement 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 that group when they sent all their field day traffic with the tracer instruction audit. 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 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 second. 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 short hands we can use, and I'll go into those in a bit. If you use one or more short hands, then we put ARL before the number to signify we're using short hands in the message. But if you don't have any short hands, 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, if you were 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 authoring the text. The station of origin is the first ham that's filling out the radiogram. Time filed is optional, just like the handling instruction is optional. But 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 got to know how many hours went by. So definitely fill out the time filed 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 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 the date, so January, I still say the whole word on the air. January 1, 5, March 3, July 2, 2. Notice how I give each number individually. The year is never included. If you've got a piece of traffic that's a year old, then probably time to give up on it. But we don't need the year. These messages aren't that old. And it just burns time. 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 it's 10.30 p.m. here in Dallas, it's technically the next day in UTC. But 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. Well, 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 2-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 golf, 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, then 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. Yeah, 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, if you really want to get in there and read it, there's a lot of reading you could do on traffic. And it's all been built just based on things learned over times. 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 this, 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 he is the destinations there. Yeah, methods and practices guide. Yeah, that's MPG. 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, 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 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 dot dough at example.com, then it's Jane dot D O T dough at sign or at AT example dot D O T 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 dough address and phone number. And so I would read this like this. I would say that this is to Jane. I'm going to go a little faster just for sake of time. I would pause to give the other person time to write this. This is going to Jane dough. 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. Now breaks, one of those fun ones. We'll talk about that in a second. This is your introduction to pro words. 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 is 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 dough, I spell dot 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 dough, I spell Delta Oscar echo and then keep rolling 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 give some some numbers. mixed group means you're about to give a mixture of letters and numbers directions really only used in the address. It's just there to, you know, northeast eighth 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 a priority traffic at any time, say break, break followed by your call sign. So sometimes it creates this will break must mean emergency. Well, in this case, break indicates you're pausing. And so you would 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 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 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 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 some 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 addressy 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 all to 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 $5 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 $5 or $10, 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 radio grams, 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 the 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 $5 to put a period there when I don't need it, right? So, you know, 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 $5 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 $5 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 $5 to make sure there's some clarity on August figures 1, 0, initial X-ray figures 73. Just gives that extra clarity that the 73 is not part of the year, or whatever it might be next to a type of thing. Question in the chat, your responsibility to help format the message? So if 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 make sure the message moves effectively through the system. And, you know, if you have a word, if you were to send supercalifragilist, expialidosis on a radiogram, I would really look at you like, why, 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 get the, you know, the good time of, 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 operation center or something, 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 is a word when you're filling in the check. So if you look at what we've got on the, on the text here, it's 12. Great seeing you yesterday, initial x-ray are the first five hope to get together again or the next five soon figure seven three or the last two. So the check here is 12. And when I read that as part of the header, I would say 12. And we'll put this all in the, of 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 seven three 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 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 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 correction yesterday. I say again, great seeing you yesterday, initial get you into that rhythm of putting that correction in and keeping things falling. 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 asked you to spell something like methotrexate, right? Try and get it right. But if 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 like that. 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 scent 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 the other so I've read the text I break the other station says go ahead. I would say signed Aaron amateur call kilo eight alpha Mike hotel and number 312 no more how copy. So end means that's the end of the of the radiogram. Book traffic. We'll talk about in a second. No more is just how many you have left to relate 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 and 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, we could have Aaron kilo eight alpha Michael tell op note reply or service to K e five YTA effectively what this is saying is if you have a reply that you need to send to me send it to me via K e five YTA and his name is Roger. So the message would go to Roger and I'll I'll show this in a real radiogram of how this 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 this to Roger. I would put K five YTA. I like to track what net I was on when I 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 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 one two Dallas where it's headed the message signature and then who I relayed it to after I moved it on the traffic net. Are there any questions on on this example and I'll buy you some time. I did not receive an email with the radiogram download our print. Okay so if you go to k8amh.com forward slash handout. Oh is that plural. Let me go find out because I don't remember. 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 filled with 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 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 three one two is the first one then the second one's three one three and the next one's three one four 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 in Dallas we read the first radiogram all the way through the first time so I we start with number three one two routine kilo eight album two Jane Doe Gray seeing you sign and then the next one we would say okay the next one in the book is number three one three and it's going to John Smith one two three fake street and number three one three one more in the book how copy and then the next one would be three one four 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 and the comment great for your field day traffic book of ten 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 and November one India Quebec India or Chris November X-ray nine kilo and Jim you know are sending the same greetings did we just put that through his 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 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 so yeah fun now you just memorize those over time we're using a shorthand here because this does mean something and it's in your handout about the ARL numbered radiograms they provide a way for us to send common phrases very quickly when you deliver it to the the other end of course you're going to say what it means like I wouldn't say okay you got a message and 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 one two you know the example would become alpha romeo lima one two again to flag the fact that we've used a shorthand here are some common ones you have the 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 deliver 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 um 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 to call out the fact that they are spelled out words rather than like figures 73 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 arrow 50 john and congrats on new amateur radio license x-ray enjoy all that the radio community offers x-ray best regards arrow 50 remember what that is it's greetings by amateur radio and so that's our greetings by amateur radio john and congrats on yet here we have the op note that that peter includes so he signs that peter dl4fn op note reply or service message to him by uh through roger in richardson texas and so what this means I see someone recognizes peter's messages in the chat um what this means is that um to send something back to peter so like if that other station wants to say thank you and and hope to hear you on the air or you know whatever their 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 ke5 yta 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 the how this op note works at the 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 through roger because that's who peter's designated here in the us uh for receiving you know for working you know those replies back to him in germany same thing here on the on this one peter's got the op note uh you know hello gary congrats on your new amateur license um you know that type of thing and these are ones I put in the mail because I just I choose if I can't get a hold of them on the phone then I I mail them it's a personal choice and then 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 and it'd be 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 get a little cooler but I'll still work it excuse me again we'll give you another minute here so again any questions feel free to throw them in the in the chat the handling instructions definitions list excuse me so that is also in the the handouts why don't I 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 then the handling instructions and what they all mean um precedences so again priority welfare emergency and then common pro signs that are used in traffic handling and then that's followed by the the ARL shorthands and there are two blocks of these the first group is generally emergency related you know like supplies requests or uh comments on damage to the area or things group two is more for the routiney things you know greetings by amateur radio greetings on your birthday you know the holiday greetings and 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 in the kind of 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 to get into the how the 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 or area or things and that's how it'll keep going yeah there'll be liaison to other nets yeah we're going to walk through that yeah all right so let's let's keep moving if you don't have it quite filled out that's okay um this is effectively how it should look um so whatever number you put um in the routine um your call sign a check of nine or uh 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 um anybody have any questions on how um we filled it out this way or if you had something a little different or anything that I can I can clarify on this I'll give you about 30 seconds and then we'll 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 um so again um 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 um is it um is it necessary not necessarily I know the sentence ended here at soon if you put it you can put it um but I like I personally like to save the five dollars and so I don't put I don't put an x-ray there for a period another question what's the what's the rationale for place so place of origin so um again on this this is the location of whoever authored this text um the rationale for that yeah um so this is um so that we know where the message came from um because again if if you are the station of origin like if I'm filling it out and I'm in Dallas but the people that it are um are authoring that message are in Fort Worth right and if I say I need five cots at Mercy Hospital Mercy Hospital in Fort Worth or Mercy Hospital in Dallas or Mercy Alpha right it just helps provide some of that clarity first off and then um also um as um Darwin's put in there I think it's to help replies go back to the proper local net it does help with with routing um because we've got that clue in there of where we can head it back to for its for its destination uh but when we think about emergency traffic or things just you know where did this come from um 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 um you know if I don't have access to uh 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 said 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 um feel free to throw them in the chat I'm going to keep rolling just to try and and keep um conscious of time here uh so now on traffic nets um 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 um introduce into the system or relay through the system uh 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 uh 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 um here's how a net control could log things for this one I was the one that was running the net um and so um 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 uh Don W9BE checked in he acted as a liaison for uh Tex the Texas traffic net which um 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 uh Roger K5YTA 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 and 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 um how we turn in our statistics uh and they get reported to me and then I report them to AR headquarters but how do we turn in those net reports well through radiogram um so okay let me turn off the pointer and we'll keep moving uh so the way this would work is after figuring out who can route what the net control station would have um those two stations connect you know and say okay I'm um you know this is K8 AMH I'm ready to copy your your traffic and then 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 whatever go go ahead go signature then they would read the signature you know sign some to do and number whatever no more or one more how copy I ride your number whatever you know thanks for the traffic and then K8 AMH and they you know thank you for taking that and ID and then turn it back to net control um that's how um 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 again go fast please copy my number three one two routine Kilo eight alpha Mike hotel one two Dallas Texas January one five uh to Jane Doe 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 the other station go ahead great seeing you yesterday initial x-ray hope to get together again soon figures seven three break the other station would say go signed Aaron amateur call Kilo eight alpha Mike hotel end number three one two and no more I'll copy any other I copy Roger you're three one two thanks for the traffic thanks for taking a K8 AMH back to net so that's how we would move that on the air how do you get involved in the traffic nets um I would recommend finding if possible a local traffic net in your area um the uh ARL uh main webpage ARL.org has a net database that you can search and let me make a note I will put that in my follow-up email um 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 are 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 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 uh we got Erin and Justin here in discord to do a demo for us so I'll uh let you guys take it from here we'll do some questions afterwards uh go ahead all right I'll I'll take it I guess hey everybody thanks thanks for jumping in we'll do a couple of practice a radiogram here uh if you printed them out uh from the handouts page uh and I promise I'll go nice and slow you could you could give this a spin to see uh how it how it flows for you when filling out the radiogram and then if there's any questions on uh well what happened there or um 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 um doing this if this if this works or do you want to do questions first let me let me double check uh to make sure I'm good to go with with the relaying let's go ahead all righty then we'll go ahead and get started um and uh this will be number 809er routine kilo eight alpha mic hotel one four dallas texas august niner uh to your station that's how we would do that on the air when it's going to the recipient is 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 a hope to get some traffic from you soon figures seven three break and again I you know say again or something but you know it goes you know we'll do go signature that's signed Aaron amateur call kilo eight alpha mic hotel end number 809er and no more how copy so hopefully that first hopefully I was slow enough so I learned with with some stations I can go faster than with others and so I try to adjust the speed based based on that um I don't know if we could throw that one up on the screen yeah you're ready for the reveal yeah yeah yeah sure thing and then if if any questions on well why did that go there or that was really confusing how come this you know that type of thing um you know definitely wanted to to give that that clarity type of thing or if you're experts uh then then you can take just and you know we'll double check that you know things are good and we had some 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 okay let's go up to Justin's demo here yeah sure all right well yep I have one more if you want to try it again and again as they say every uh not usually has our 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 nine going to your station break go all right um thanks for attending this talk and hope to I spell tango oscar see I spell sierra echo echo you all at mixed group delta charlie two niner initial x-ray okay hack the planet figures 73 break sign go ahead yeah signed Justin amateur call kilo echo eight mike yankee foxtrot and message number one three no more how copy yeah roger one three thanks for the traffic k8 a it's that we do here yeah very good there let's do a reveal on that right 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 uh when I mentioned the word two I made sure to spell it out just so uh it's 100 accurate and someone didn't write tango oscar oscar on accident they would spell tango oscar so that's uh 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 uh go to q and a uh I guess uh let's go there now so let's go to the chats uh hit up discord presentation chat or twitch and we'll get some questions uh but I guess first uh you wanted to go over questions from the video so go ahead Erin oh okay all right we had we had two that came up during that um first one uh 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 uh with relaying um traffic and I mean you could think of that as um echo link or maybe if you're an all-star or you know something like that where you're you're leveraging the internet for for moving things uh 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 and and and you know I think back to was it um uh T-Mobile third party um had an issue on their end and it disrupted cellular communications essentially across the board right that's that's the scenario we're preparing for and so if we get into the habit of well I gotta relay this traffic from Dallas to you know I don't know Washington or California or you know Massachusetts or something and so I'll just hop on echo link and go over the internet and do that and we and we built that habit of we're just going to use the internet and when things really do hit the fan and we got to go over the air um you kind of have to now start getting into that over the air hf handling you know that 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 when the event does happen we could just flow into it and 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 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 died on the internet and we haven't really we haven't really addressed what's going on so the internet some independent traffic nets use echo linker things but from the ARL side we really wanted to move over the air to reflect a real world you know situation type of thing if that hopefully provides the clarity there if there's if there's something I can um clarify a little further feel free to throw it in the in the discussion um the other question we had was um international radiograms are always in English for the traffic originating in the US um yeah the common language that's over the air for us is English because that's you know one of the common languages here in the US so if I add something that you know entered the system uh let's say in Spanish right I'm in Dallas so that that would be a good candidate for another language it might have if I had no other option I had no interpreters with English and my my quasi Spanish skills could make it work then you know I I would try my best to try and make that move now there's some you know assumptions that happen with that that the people that get that along the way are going to be able to do the same thing right that's the risk when you start taking traffic um in in a language other than than English um you're right the thing is gotta keep moving and you have to to move it within the system that really you know the majority of us are all all speaking English and and if you want to amplify that example even further what if it was um you know Chinese or Japanese or something right um if that just adds even more complexity to things so uh when we're moving traffic here in the US and the national traffic system against US and Canada the English is is the is the language that that's you know commonly used for that and drives the very very very very very vast majority traffic I have not encountered anything that wasn't in English and if it's headed to um Peter in in Germany or I I know I've had some traffic from well you know Great Britain so it'll be English um but things moving in and out it's it's English very good uh let's go to the chats twitch and discord everybody throw your questions out there we'll uh get Aaron to answer for us I think the talk was so good uh everything was answered and then I think you had the two big questions just there so uh yeah we'll keep it open here for a minute it's it is very it's kind of like okay here's the fire hose and enjoy so uh you know I I I give this talk um once a month my next one is this is coming Saturday yeah um k8amh.com forward slash events I have some folks that take it a couple of times uh where like 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 oh yeah I remember that or oh okay you know it's just kind of the frame of reference changes um you know so if if this is kind of um you're like oh my you know holy crap this is a bunch you know uh you're welcome to jump back in again of course type of thing but uh there's definitely a lot to absorb yeah it's not something that's learned in 10 minutes you know I mean it's it's something that's built in time right that muscle memory gets built you know with time uh it's a question does this system get used for a qsl card equivalent sometimes uh yes uh we'll get traffic sometimes that um you know great here great hearing you on hf or you know something along that line type of thing um you know hope to hear from you again or those types of things yeah it's um it's something that that moves across the traffic system um we get those types of of radograms we get the like happy birthday merry christmas we get the you know the welcome to the hobbies or um you know ask about areas in your area you know those types of things um we've had a couple of things that we're doing here uh to help with with generating some variety in traffic too that um I can quickly mention one's a trivia program where once a week there's a new question that comes up um and you can you know send in your answer for points and the points are you know just kind of you know why not I'll get some statistics but um you know say you got five right you know in the last you know a couple months for that type of thing um but you send your answers as as radograms to the traffic system um and I get to see how long it takes to so it gives me some data points to say well how is the system working and did that take you know one day or two days and on average it takes two days for things to to move across the country um but if you get that occasional why did that take two weeks right then you have the opportunity to understand and um you know try and improve things to um you know make it better for next time type of thing but um ntstrivia.com is the place for that one and uh also have a penpal program where I kind of hook you up with another traffic handler and you kind of start the conversation of you know 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 uh traffic through the traffic system and uh that's at ntspenpal.com I probably put those addresses in the in the chat areas might might be helpful uh so why don't I do that we'll throw that in chat and definitely include it in made a data for the video so thank you Aaron thank you Justin I think we're out of time uh let's uh yeah I guess give a virtual round of applause that was an amazing presentation definitely a lot to absorb I hope the system gets used more I'd definitely like to see some more radiograms in my local area so that's very great thank you perfect thanks everybody and if you have questions yeah knh at arl.net feel free yep have a great day thank you