The National Traffic
System Nets
in
Western Massachusetts
|
Amateur Radio Station -- K1TMA Alvah Buckmore, Jr., 18 Tannery Road, Westfield, Massachusetts 01084-4822 |
The National Traffic
System Nets
in
Western Massachusetts
| As the Net Manager for
the First Region Net I think I am in an unique position to discuss nets;
their nature, in respect to traffic nets particularly for New England;
and the entire makeup of these Nets for both New England in general and
Western Massachusetts in particular.
The National Traffic System was designed by the American Radio Relay League, http://www.arrl.org/, with a managerial infrastructure to handle traffic in an orderly and systematic fashion. There are two objectives in this design: People who can use the system to operate periodically with or without a schedule and people who can operate almost every day several hours a day. It is designed to operate daily and sometimes continuously with the recent introduction of certain digital modes of communications. It is a system which uses all modes of communications common among the amateur radio community, including Packet, RTTY, CW, SSB and AMTOR. Since this web-site was
not designed to cover this subject exhaustively, we suggest you consult
the ARRL at http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/pscm/sec2-ch1.html
Our purpose of this web-page is to list all of the activity, for the National Traffic System, in Western Massachusetts, an area from the New York border to Route 495 east of Boston. This activity has been found from 160 meters to 70 cm on simplex, duplex, FM repeaters and full-automatic robotic systems in the AMTOR digital mode, and others. Nets for the National Traffic System start off at the local level; the section level; to the regional level and then to the transcontinental level in the United States. Local levels represent city and sub-city nets, in the larger cities -- such as New York City or Los Angels -- and consist of smaller, informal nets which may not be traffic- handling nets, per se, but will handle traffic periodically when the occasion requires it. In Western Massachusetts there are many, many local level nets:
In respect to Western Massachusetts, we have the local "Cycle Sessions." Cycle I is at 10 o'clock in the morning and held at Mt. Greylock. Cycle II is also held at Mt. Greylock but at 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Mt.Tom has the responsibility
to hold Cycles III and IV which are held at 4:00 o'clock in the
afternoon and 7:00 o'clock in the evening respectively.
Cycle III is presently not in operation due to a lack of radio operators; however, Cycle IV has been very active for quite some time now. Each of these Cycle Sessions run several minutes to a half hour every day, five days a week, from Monday to Friday.
On each Cycle Session there is a Regional Liaison who represents the connection between the Cycle Sessions and the First Region Net (the net for the regional level). We have 10 Regional Nets and there are three area nets: -- The Eastern Area Net; the Central Area Net and the Pacific Area Net. For all of Western Massachusetts there is only two section representatives for the First Region Net. Then there is a section representative for Eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and, finally, Maine.
In Western Massachusetts, all of the local and Cycle Session nets forward traffic to the Section Representative for the First Region Net, who either sends it to another Section Representative in the First Region Net or to an Eastern Area Representative (as "through traffic") for outside of New England. N1LKJ, KW1U and K1WU are Eastern Area Representatives for the First Region Net. KK3F is the TCC (Trans-continental Corp) representative in Hyattsville, Maryland. Then the reverse order occurs when traffic from outside of New England goes through the TCC, the Eastern Area Repre- sentative into the First Region Net and into the hands of a Section Representative who forwards it to the appropriate local or Cycle Session for delivery. Most of the traffic
for Western Massachusetts, as well as all of New England, is
These people are NM1K
(Enfield, Ct.), W1GMF (Abinton, Mass.), N1IQI (Bryant-
K1HEJ (New Britain, Ct.), the Section Traffic Manager for the state of Connecticut, generally generates an enormous amount of traffic, originating on 2 meter packet, in anticipation of the Eastern States Exposition in September of each year (which keeps me very busy during this period). NM1K also originates his traffic on a local packet node in Connecticut, as does W1GMF and W1PEX in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, respectively. KA1RMV (Colchester, CT.) has been generating a great deal of traffic in the last year. KV1S, out of Keene, New Hampshire, generates
a great deal of highly individualized
Patricia Garvin, WB5NKD, of Oklahoma City,
OK, just started recently to generate
Then Bob, N1UAN, of Kingsport, TN, has been
busy doing the same thing recently.
|
Central Mass. Two Meter Net on 146.970 MHz meets daily at 9:00
o'clock in the
