The ARRL Letter, Vol 26, No. 17

No labor ruling is or was required. There is and was no labor issue.

Any employer may state reasonable and logical skill, knowledge, and/or license requirements for any job. The requirement was a license requirement.

The only question in anyone's mind was whether the FCC would consider an employee who was "on the clock" to be being "paid" using their amateur license and/or using their license "for" their employer. The FCC answer was a rather resounding "No".

 

If the people participating in a net do not have the TRAINING, SKILLS, and EQUIPMENT required to do a simple thing like meet on a new frequency, they are WORTHLESS in an emergency situation. If a mode is so sensitive to tuning errors that TRAINED, properly equipped operators cannot make contact on a new frequency, that mode is WORTHLESS in an emergency situation.

The COMMON practice (known to those of us who have been NCS) is for one station to find a clear frequency and return to the net. Both stations then move off to the "spotted" frequency, with a pre-arranged "A will call B" protocol. They return to net frequency when traffic is completed.

If stations are unable to work with that well-defined scenario, they lack a) training, b) skills, and/or c) properly functioning equipment.

NONE of the above requires "assigned, channelized frequencies". It has worked quite well on the ham bands for many decades, as any NCS of a major net can confirm.

The last paragraph does not even begin to make sense. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a time when NO Winlink PMBO was reachable. There continue to be many, many times when there is ZERO propagation support for point-to-point links within the ranges of 30 to 250 miles.

The great advantages of Winlink HF are: a) that it can ALWAYS pass traffic, and b) that only ONE RF link is normally required. It can pass traffic because the operator can choose a station 100 miles away, 1000 miles away, or 5000 miles away. With IDENTICAL SSN, as distance increases, the MUF increases. As the MUF increases, more bands become available. Obviously, the higher the frequency, the better the SNR. The best SNR is always available on the band nearest the MUF.

In other words, when I have no path to pass traffic point-to-point over a 200 mile distance, I can still pass that traffic DIRECTLY to the recipient by using a PMBO that is 1000 miles or more away.

 

Larry,

This is my last post to you on either of these subjects.

NCS's of traffic nets know that you do NOT send someone out to look for a clear frequency who then returns and gets dispatched again. Your "supposed" method is used on NO NET I HAVE EVER PARTICIPATED IN. That includes CW NTS nets, phone NTS nets, the SATERN nets, the ARES emergency nets, or even the Skywarn VHF nets. You dispatch the traffic participants to a meeting frequency and they either find each other or they don't. If the don't then they both return to the net for another try.

If you don't believe me go read the NTS Methods and Procedures Guide, Section 3.5.2.

You just continue to make things up as you go along. Your credibility just continues to drop.

Your information about the smoothed sunspot cycle is just another attempt to misdirect the dicussion into another avenue.

The actual fact is that you are *RIGHT*, you don't understand trunking theory and therefore my last paragraph made no sense to you. It would make sense to anyone who has ever been in the business of actually managing a trunking network carrying real traffic for real customers. That is why you simply can not contribute anything of value to the discussions of these kinds of issues.

Your credibility just continues to drop.

You obviously do not know net procedures and you obviously don't understand even basic trunking theory. We have nothing more to discuss.

tim ab0wr

 

Larry,

This is my last post to you on either of these subjects.

NCS's of traffic nets know that you do NOT send someone out to look for a clear frequency who then returns and gets dispatched again. Your "supposed" method is used on NO NET I HAVE EVER PARTICIPATED IN. That includes CW NTS nets, phone NTS nets, the SATERN nets, the ARES emergency nets, or even the Skywarn VHF nets. You dispatch the traffic participants to a meeting frequency and they either find each other or they don't. If the don't then they both return to the net for another try.

If you don't believe me go read the NTS Methods and Procedures Guide, Section 3.5.2.

You just continue to make things up as you go along. Your credibility just continues to drop.

Your information about the smoothed sunspot cycle is just another attempt to misdirect the dicussion into another avenue.

The actual fact is that you are *RIGHT*, you don't understand trunking theory and therefore my last paragraph made no sense to you. It would make sense to anyone who has ever been in the business of actually managing a trunking network carrying real traffic for real customers. That is why you simply can not contribute anything of value to the discussions of these kinds of issues.

Your credibility just continues to drop.

You obviously do not know net procedures and you obviously don't understand even basic trunking theory. We have nothing more to discuss.

tim ab0wr[/QUOTE]
Regarding not using accepted (and highly effective) procedure: In the aftermath of Katrina, I was on the ARES HF net just about every hour that it was operational -- both from my car and from our base of operations. While I applaud the sacrifices and efforts of those who operated on that net, both as net members and as NCS, I cannot applaud the severe lack of training and net discipline. I have never operated on a less trained and/or disciplined net !

In any net, the NCS is the one station that MUST understand net operations, and the one station that MUST set the "tone" of the net. Other stations learn by example from the NCS and other members, and by mentoring. Quick, focused, and effective exchanges are REQUIRED on a net -- especially on a net that handles disaster-related traffic. The ARES net leaders MUST improve training and discipline.

In a crowded band, it is highly ineffective (as in "Three Stooges Level" ineffective) for TWO stations to be playing "hide-and-seek". ONE station can find and "declare" on a frequency, then return to the net, "recheck", and move the other station off to a KNOWN frequency -- with "who calls whom" clearly established. That way, the NCS actually KNOWS where those stations are, in case other traffic comes up for either -- AND the NCS KNOWS of at least one clear frequency for future traffic. We have done that for exact procedure for DECADES.

I don't have to "make things up". People a lot smarter than I created the described procedure many, many years ago. I was merely smart enough to learn and use it.

Regarding SSN: The information regarding different communications capabilities with constant SSN has EVERYTHING to do with the TOTAL UNAVAILABILITY of HF communications on point-to-point links versus the AVAILABILITY of HF communications when using WL2K. It was a direct response to your statement, and totally disproved that statement.

Trunking theory has LITTLE to do with real-time amateur and/or EMCOMM communication. A properly run net DISTRIBUTES its "record" traffic over as many frequencies and stations as are available or required, so that the greatest amount of traffic may be passed in the least amount of time.

Rather obviously, if the stations are using a 4 character per second mode, almost any message will take a LONG time to pass -- and even longer for the inevitable corrections. If the stations are using a 1000 character per second mode with built-in error correction, the same message will be passed quite rapidly -- especially if passed on a longer path on a higher frequency, which AUTOMATICALLY means a frequency with vastly higher SNR. In point of fact, the high-speed stations can pass MANY messages while the slow-speed stations labor through passing ONE.

Station AVAILABILITY is a critical parameter in EMCOMM. The faster a message is passed, the faster the handling station becomes available for another message. Higher speeds mean higher availability.

Several well-respected organizations have accepted the rationality of my approach, and have acknowledged my expertise. My article on Disaster Communications planning and system design was published in the international magazine "Public Safety Communications".