The Brass Pounders Quarterly

Volume I Issue 1
Copyright 2007 by The ARRL National Traffic System

Contents:
Editor's corner
NTS news briefs
From the editor's email inbox

General articles: Do they know their resources?
NTS outreach: The message fair, new tricks for old dogs
How to submit an article
Where to get BPQ

*A note to over-the-air BBS operators:
If you receive this file via email in plain text please make it available to users of your systems.  For consistency name the file bpq followed by the volume and issue number.  For example, the first issue is volume 1 issue 1, so the file name would be bpq-0101.txt etc.  If you do not have the capability of making it a retrievable file please make it a user accessible bulletin.

This electronic newsletter is free to all who may wish to receive it. You may upload it to bulletin board systems; ftp sites etc. so long as no fees are charged for access to it.  Individual articles retain the copyright of the author.

Editor's corner

Since this is the first issue of Brass Pounders' Quarterly you're reading I thought it might be an idea to tell you why I thought it necessary to start an NTS publication. I also thought it might be nice to tell you a bit about how you can help me make it informative to your fellow traffic handlers.

First let's address why an NTS specific publication. Less time and attention is spent on NTS than any other aspect of the hobby when it comes to ARRL HQ and the production of QST.  Other than some dry stats there's virtually nothing at all except an op-ed or a little blurb here and there.

This is not a decision taken blindly by the folks at HQ.  Though many of us don't like to see it, traffic handling is no longer part of mainstream ham radio though many of us think it still should be.

Events like Katrina bring out numerous operators without this vital training component, and it shows. In fact, it loomed large in my view during Katrina and its aftermath when I had to become a teacher on the spot just to get my traffic handled for two hospitals in New Orleans that I served.

There are good operators still handling traffic regularly and many of us have the same complaints and concerns.  We want to encourage newcomers to get proper training in traffic handling.  We want to see the public actually utilize NTS more which is a challenge in these days of high speed internet and free or nearly so long distance telephone.

Quality third party traffic promotes good training, and proper operating habits are fostered when it is available regularly.

All these factors taken together indicate that NTS needs to do a bit more polishing of its public image. To accomplish it, a brainstorm I had one evening has turned into the Brass Pounders' Quarterly which you're now reading.

A quarterly seems to be about right for NTS in my opinion.  We can provide some information to traffic handlers well in that time span taking special note of seasonal changes etc.  This way your editor has some time to actually put together an issue which will provide you useful information and be enjoyable to read.  With that in mind here's what I'd like from you, the reader and regular traffic handler.

We're not interested in publishing the same old dry stats about how many check-ins, how many pieces of traffic, etc.  I'm interested in hearing from TCC directors, net managers, and section traffic managers however.  I'd like to hear from you about how your nets are doing, average check-ins per session maybe or other facts you deem worthy of attention and publication. Such items as notes on silent keys or new stations taking TCC assignments will be welcome, and a news briefs section immediately follows this space just for this material.

If you MUST send me monthly reports please cut and paste the text into an email, no file attachments unless they are straight text files please.

Tell us about interesting things you've done to promote traffic handling such as message fairs etcetera.

Our purpose is training and service to the public.  These days both have been getting short shrift from leaders in the amateur radio community.  With some work we can change this for the better.

See the how to submit an article section later in this issue for guidelines on article submission formatting etc.

You'll note I authored every piece in this issue. These were originally destined for other publications, but I decided to publish them here first. As you'll note from the where to get BPQ section at the end of each issue club newsletter editors and others are welcome to reproduce this material so long as BPQ and the author of any material reproduced is credited.

73 de NF5B

NTS News Briefs

Frank Thrash, w4dlz has been relocated to Florida from Louisiana for quite some time now so has recently resigned as manager of LCW net.  He will still remain active as an NCS for this net as well as perform his regular duties on Region 5 and other nets.  Frank will also retain his position on Central Area Staff as a member at large.

---

Daytime NTS in Central Area needs a real shot in the arm.  Both regions 9 and 10 are scarce on Central Area net daytime, and most days one cannot even find a region net on their regularly posted frequencies at the scheduled times.  CAN daytime also needs net controls and TCC stations desperately.  If you're interested in volunteering for a daytime TCC position contact Dave Knight, W4ZJY at  4_wzjy@mindspring.com.

---

On a related note to the second item above:
Earlier this year longtime traffic handler Karl Koppelman, WA0TFC, suffered a stroke. At last report he was residing in a nursing home and unable to do anything with ham radio. He still is quite glad to hear from his ham radio colleagues. Send cards and letters to him at:
Room 214B.
Benedictine Living Community Home Of St. Pete
1907 Kline Street
St. Peter MN, 56082.

From the editor's email inbox

A sampling of both positive and negative feedback we receive here at BPQ from time to time will appear in BPQ.  WE welcome your comments, suggestions, and items for publication.  The editor reserves the right to edit letters to fit available space. Even though we're an electronic newsletter, we're not trying to write a book. Honest folks <grin>.

Now, on with the mail.

We haven't even put the first issue to bed yet at BPQ and already some items for this space.

From: KB0OFD in Missouri:
Greeting's!  My call is KB0OFD and the name is Gary. Nice to meet you. I run a MSYS Packet BBS in Forsyth, MO. I would be more than happy to pass your newsletter on packet network.  I would like to see the NTS Traffic more often on the BBS.  I like your ideas and think it would be worth a shot. Am glad Dave forwarded your email to me. Again nice to meet you ...

And you as well Gary, hope you enjoy the newsletter.

From: Rodney Baker in Texas
I was inactive for 15 years from 1991 to 2006.  When I became active again, I could not believe the changes that had taken place. There is very little traffic anymore.  Just "renew your license" or "join a slow speed cw net" etc.  It is a pleasure to receive a message from someone to someone else saying happy birthday, congratulations on the new baby or whatever.

Appreciate the comments Rodney.  I remember back in the '70's hearing the messages sent out advising concerned parents that a new recruit just arrived safely at the Marine Corps recruiting Depot in  San Diego CA.  Lots of phone patches for the troops in those days too.
A far cry from that, and hopefully we can all do something about that.  We can all start by not coming to our section or region net empty handed at least once per week.  Bring a piece of real third party traffic to the net at least once per week!  It's been said that you don't show up at a potluck dinner without bringing a contribution, your traffic net should be looked at in the same manner. That's how we get to provide real training for the newcomers!

And finally, this from New Jersey:

K2UL writes:
We already do this in New Jersey - it's called the NJ Traffic Bulletin and it's available on the web. Expanding to a national NTS newsletter by collecting the "best" from local newsletters might be one way to go.  But using ftp and telnet, yucch.  A pdf file on a web page is the way to go in the 21st century.

We're talking a little wider distribution than New Jersey, but thanks anyway.

As for your other comment, there are many reasons for the choice of machine readable plain text. There are still lots of packet and pactor systems out there, and machine readable will benefit those
folks.

Now my other rationale: I'm not playing with page layouts and all that stuff, I'm distributing information, not pretty. That's the first part, keep my workload down, after all I'm a man with a life away from a radio as well. Back in the day when I edited a high school newspaper I had time for all that. These days between business and other life responsibilities I don't.  However, a plain text newsletter can be formatted and handled via email from wherever I happen to be because of business.

There's an even stronger rationale though and it has everything to do with the pdf format itself.

Being a blind man I must use text to speech or braille. Often pdf format files will not display properly using such technologies, often they display nothing usable at all, even with the so-called accessibility plug-in.

When this occurs there's one choice you have. That's to print the darned thing out and run it through optical character recognition after scanning the pages.

Now I don't know about you, but I've done plenty of messing with optical character recognition, and so far I'm unimpressed.  I see at least one braille magazine every month whose producers used OCR to get the text imported for brailling, and the amount of errors boggles the mind. Before my after the hurricane house fire in Slidell I had a flatbed scanner and accompanying OCR software, and though it has gotten me access to material I couldn't have used without it the amount of editing I had to go through to get a useful reference work was a drain on my time.  Often it required somebody else with the document I scanned being available to help me fix the errors introduced by the software.  OCR is not as intelligent as people think, yet.

Now any real traffic handler knows why CW is an often superior mode over SSB due to errors creeping in during transmission and retransmission of a message. Consider OCR in the same light, and you'll understand my aversion to using it for a task such as editing and compiling information for such a publication as this.  I'm not going to help kill a bunch of trees just to have to clean up the output of OCR software for an hour or two and then guess at what I'm reading.  After all this work, I still get to dispose of all the paper.

If you want to submit items for publication do it in plain text please. I get to throw away enough adobe format stuff sent to my email address. It especially gripes one when one knows that most of this stuff came from a word processor, i.e. machine readable text.

And for K2UL, you're welcome to utilize anything you find useful from this publication, if you care to read it.  So you don't care for telnet and ftp.  That's fine.  If you're on packet chances are your eastern area pactor NTSD hub will have this quarterly available and it will make its way into the packet system. I know you folks have quite an extensive packet network out your way.  If not, I'm sure others will appreciate it even if you're not interested.  If you wish to play with page layouts and conversions of this publication to adobe acrobat, have at it, but a plain text machine readable format will be what is produced from here.  If anybody wishes to convert it to another format to display on a web site they're welcome to it.  I make no money from this, and will take the time to edit and compile these quarterly newsletters just to put information in the hands of folks interested in traffic handling, especially folks using SSB and CW.  If it isn't modern enough for you that's fine with me.

"Modern" is killing the essential skills so-called emergency communicators should have because nobody teaches and fosters them anymore.  When the stuff hits the fan and the infrastructure dumps its the op who can use SSB and CW to get the message sent accurately that will be in short supply while everyone else stares at their plastic infrastructure based tools that now are little more than expensive paperweights.  The newer tools have their place to be sure, but some recent disasters give us good examples of what happens when they fail.

To quote an old saw I got from somewhere on the internet, "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail."

Articles

Do they know their resources?
By Richard Webb, NF5B

Central Area Net Cycle Two Manager
Operations manager: Radio Rescue Net

I'll bet you just about everyone reading this is involved in some way with their local ARES group or other emergency response organization as well as their other radio activities.  In these other groups we hear a lot about what vhf/uhf frequencies are to be used for what type of traffic or which net. We're told regularly where our local packet and other digital systems can be found on vhf and uhf.. This is good because it keeps the newcomers in the loop, if they're paying attention.

Yet with all these newcomers to the HF bands I'd be willing to bet that most couldn't tell you how to find their Section or Region traffic net if they needed to.  They might tell you that it's somewhere on 80/75 or 40 meters but that's probably as far as they could specify, if they know at all.

The time for these newcomers to become familiar with these resources and where to find them isn't when suddenly that newcomer to HF is the only outlet your group might have for important traffic to your state emergency management agency or that batch of health & welfare messages from the shelter.  The time for that newbie to get clued in is before he needs to use it.

Our ARES group turns in a report every Monday evening to the SEC detailing how many stations participated in the previous week's ARES net, and how many of those stations are on the role as ARES members.  For quite awhile one person was taking these reports to the Monday night combined section and ARES net.  Now we've started asking for volunteers to do it.  YET I don't think that many newcomers are stepping up to volunteer.  Maybe having these on the local list will get us more volunteers.

Does your ARES group list these frequencies along with all these local frequencies? Does your ARES group do regular training in message handling?  Ours does. We also know who we can call on if we actually need to use cw to move traffic that can do the job.

If not, suggest to your group's leadership that such resources be included or located if unknown.  You might have an old timer who checks into his cw traffic net regularly. Said old timer might not even have a vhf or uhf rig that can get on the local nets.  When you find him you can always resurrect an older mobile, help him get a homebrew antenna up, slip a tone board in said old mobile and get him on with the locals.  He might be that go-to guy you need when the stuff hits the fan.

NTS Outreach

The message fair, new tricks for old dogs
By Richard Webb, nf5b
Manager: Central Area Net Cycle Two
Operations manager: Radio Rescue Net

When you read the editorial section in this issue you saw my comment that NTS hasn't been well promoted by the amateur community. Here's a look at one way this can be remedied.

In days of old when ham radio was demonstrated at a booth for a fair or trade show the "send a free radiogram" booth was a staple of these demonstrations and displays.

These days with cheap or free long distance calling and the ubiquitous cellular phone a lot of people probably won't show much interest.  At least, on the surface that's how it looks.  Yet you'll catch plenty of interest if you follow some of these guidelines and your display will definitely be memorable.

First: Push the emergency communications angle.  Set your display up as you might a type two arct. or emergency field station if you're not familiar with the term.

Now before we even get started, forget the laptop computer and the Winlink modem for the public display part.  Here's why:

If you don't, folks might have doubts that their messages are really going over radio at all, and think this is just a gimmick. You're going to let them see, if possible, and hear their messages being transmitted via radio.

Set your display up so that a counter person takes their message. If working a fair or other event some canned text about the event is a good starter.  Messages of course should be brief, a total of 25 words or less including your canned text. The counter person should get first and last name of recipient, address including zip code and telephone number. We'll get back to the counterperson's duties in a moment.

If you can set your display up so as to have a glass partition between the counter person and the radio operator that will be sending your message (using voice or cw only from the display) set your operator up on the other side of this partition where the outside noises will be minimized as much as possible. This will keep the transmitted noise down and make it easier for the receiving station that will relay the message(s) on the first leg of their journey.

Your radio op at the display site should be using headphones in either case. If he's isolated from the onlookers behind a partition so much the better.

Isolation not possible? Here's a new wrinkle.  Bring out your local ham with a fast scan amateur TV setup. Have him set up the receiver in the public area near the counter person. Set up the transmit end of the link in your emergency communications van or at a nearby site. Use this site for your sending station. Now equip your booth with a good receiver to listen to your sending operator's transmitted audio, and possibly the audio of the receiving station as well.  This lets the viewers hear their messages transmitted on the first leg of their trip.

A couple of runners can be employed to run messages to your actual operator's position in that communications van trailer or back room.  In fact having a few runners available can help you have adequate people to talk to that interested party who comes by the booth and maybe recruit a new ham or educate that emergency services person.  If these runners are also licensed operators they can take their turn at the sending position and get some practice too.

If you employ an amateur fast scan TV link in your demo be sure to tell the public about it. Provide good signage that tells the folks passing by what's happening at your display.  Then have your counter person ready with plenty of message forms.

The ARL numbered radiograms are perfect for these setups.  Let's say for our example you're working the Podunk County Fair.  You can use the venerable ARL fifty one in your text. This is three words which translate as:

"Greetings by amateur radio. This message is sent as a free public service by ham radio operators here at the Podunk county fair. Am having a wonderful time."

Now John Q. public comes to your booth and wants to say happy birthday to his aunt.  Your text can easily add an ARL forty six and have a nice compact message that says a whole lot to his aunt in just a few words.  Make sure your radio operators counter minders and others know how to use these or have a quick reference available.

Now we've talked about how to provide some new wrinkles to that venerable old message fair. So the question comes up where to target for these displays. Of course your county or state fair's a good place.  The local shopping mall during holiday season's a nice one as well.  However think about a few nonstandard places such as the gun and outdoor sports shows; conventions; local festivals, etcetera.

You'll have a lot of fun, get the word to the public and provide some great training for your local ARES/RACES volunteers.  Look for an opportunity and give it a try!

How to submit an article

Send a file attach of a straight ASCII file to the editor at  elspider@bellsouth.net  for inclusion.

Brief items for our news section should be sent as a regular email.

Again, attach plain ASCII files only.  If using MS Word choose the save-as option to save as plain text, possibly called dos text.  Check your favorite word processor's documentation on creating ASCII files.

No graphics files, pdf, etcetera please!
This electronic newsletter is intended to be machine readable.
This newsletter may be distributed on packet and other radio systems where system operators and relay stations wish to closely monitor content of transmissions. It is intended to be platform independent which is not possible with graphical file formats.  Even the operator with the old commodore or Apple II should be able to read this newsletter, or the fellow using the old dumb terminal.  Text to speech systems, etcetera should have no problems reading this newsletter.

If possible use a file extension of .art for your article.  If it fits one of these categories use the category name as the file name. Regular categories for which we seek articles are as follows:

general : articles of general interest to traffic handlers.
    Use a file name of general.art

training : articles regarding training hints and tips.
    As above, use training.art if possible.

Outreach : articles on ways to reach out to the public and promote NTS and amateur radio message handling capabilities.
    As with the above examples, outreach.art.

Using these naming conventions allows your editor to automatically process your article.

Type the title twice, the first time at left margin preceded by a * character.  The second time centered as you'd like it to appear. The line with the * will be used to automatically build a table of contents and the asterisk removed. Your article will then appear with title centered.

Immediately below the centered title please place your name and call sign so that folks will know who authored the article.  If you have an email address please provide it as well.  Though often these can be looked up the information provided in call sign databases is often incorrect.  If you are a net manager or hold an ARRL field organization position please provide this information as well.

If possible keep line lengths to 70 characters or fewer. Again remember that we are attempting to be platform independent.  Many of our readers will wish to view this on their screens instead of printing it out.

If you cannot save your article as plain text paste the text into an email and send it.  Your editor will do his best to format it properly for display on most computer systems.  If you do this state in the subject line that text enclosed in email is an article for BPQ.

Although you retain the copyright on your work, submission of any articles implies permission to publish them in BPQ and distribute said work electronically without remuneration to you or BPQ. NO fee may be charged to receive BPQ.

Where to get BPQ

BPQ should be available on your regular NTSD pactor hub. The Central Area Hub will carry BPQ on his system.  Connect with w4zjy scanning regular NTSD frequencies.

On the internet:

Many fine internet connected bulletin boards carry BPQ in the hamnews file area as a zip file using the same naming conventions as the text files within them. These files are distributed by the ham-fdn and the International Filegate Project. Visit www.filegate.net/

FidoNet:  Many fine bulletin board systems available via telnet www and dial-up can link to the ham-fdn described above. If you don't see it on your favorite fido board, ask the sysop to link to the hamnews area through his/her regular files link.

FidoNet is a noncommercial network of bulletin board hobbyists.  For a good start try here:

Waldo's place USA.  modem  12am-6pm EST.  (919) 774-5930
telnet://bbs.wpusa.dynip.com
http://www.wpusa.dynip.com/
ftp://ftp.wpusa.dynip.com

Radio Rescue Net Operations BBS
Modem only  0600-1200 UTC  28.8 kbps n81  (901) 465-9921


If you are the system operator of a BBS (either landline or radio) and cannot get BPQ through your regular links it can be sent you via email as either regular email or a file attachment.   Send an email to bpq.distro@116-901.ftn.wpusa.dynip.com

Provide your email address in the text and tell us how you'd like to receive BPQ.  Also tell us what kind of BBS system you operate, its frequencies of operation if a packet/pactor board, or its dial-up/telnet info etc.  Also, please give us your callsign.

We wish to keep the email distribution list fairly small, so look to your favorite internet pactor or packet connections first if at all possible.

Thanks for reading and 73,
Richard Webb, NF5B


Send correspondence to the editor via email using the following email address:  elspider@bellsouth.net   OR  using plain text only to:  bpq.editor@116-901.ftn.wpusa.dynip.com

All file attached article submissions should be sent to the bellsouth address.  See the earlier section on how to submit an article.

Place bpq feedback or similar text in the subject line so that it receives proper attention from the editor.

Readers are encouraged to create a hardcopy of this newsletter for those who do not have computer access, but have an interest in the material within.  Reproduction of articles in club newsletters is permitted so long as BPQ and the original author are credited.

For more information contact the editor.

BRASS POUNDERS' QUARTERLY

Published by traffic handlers for traffic handlers

Copyright ARRL National Traffic System, electronic distribution encouraged.
 

 Last modified:  November 13, 2009 09:07 PM