Passing Traffic

The training topic for tonight was mainly derived from the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Course Level 1 3rd Edition sections Eight and Nine, Basic Message Handling parts one and two.

Knowing how to handle traffic (which indicates formal traffic which is written and follows the ARRL Radiogram format) is a good skill to have. The weekly BARC Net is listed in the ARRL Online Net Directory and we ask that check-ins note if they have traffic.

Have you ever wondered what this traffic thing was?

Did you know, and wondered what it would be like to send traffic, what you might send and how it would go about getting there?

I have been part of the latter group for over a year now and was only slightly clearer about it after reading books, searching around the net and having conversations with more knowledgeable hams.

Traffic from the BARC net that is not for our local area should flow to a Section Net via a voluenteer station who would be known as a BARC Net Liaison to the Section Net for that message. Local Section nets that are candidates for out of area traffic to be passed to are the Beehive Utah Net, FARM Net, Rocky Mountain MARA Net and the Utah Code Net. From the Section Net the traffic may be passed up to one of the Twelfth Region Nets (TWN) then to one of the Pacific Area Nets (PAN) if it needs to be routed out of the Section, Region or Area.

Every source I read and every person I conversed with said that the best way to learn how traffic is passed is to check into a NTS traffic net several times. Since I didn't want to put off sending the radiograms for a few months of once a week MARA check-ins, I decided to plunge into an example on the BARC net without any previous practice.

In tonight's training exercise after a brief overview and call for stations willing to relay traffic up to a local Section Net, Ernie, KB7ZNH, volunteered to relay traffic to the Beehive Utah Net. I had an ARL formatted message (Radiogram)ready to pass and despite some stumbling and mistakes on my (KD7YKO) part Ernie had a good copy. It was fun and I hope that the message is well received at it's destination.

If you have an interest in passing traffic, print out the Radiogram form, write up your message, using ARL numbered messages (or not) and announce that you have Traffic when you check in.

Try it. You just might like it.