I think where NTS should shine is with health and welfare traffic. Most
of the NTS folks I know don't know or care what ICS is. And, conversely,
emergency management doesn't know what NTS/Radiogram is. NTS, from my
experience and in my region, really isn't about working with emergency
management agencies.
One of the things I'd like to see is to have at least a few NTS folks in
our area utilize NBEMS/FLDIGI/FLMSG during a mass casualty test to see
if they could handle something like 50 health and welfare messages from
a single location. Digital would be the only practical means of doing so
from a shelter, for instance. I would envision a single basic message
saying we're at the ??? shelter and we're ok. And then a CSV data sheet
of the destination addresses and phone numbers sent separately. Once the
book traffic hits the various nets, who cares what mode it goes by... as
long as the NTS folks can deliver the message.
Katrina proved that the current system of health and welfare message
handling was then (and is probably still today) unable to cope with a
major disaster. The Salvation Army (SATERN) website just basically shut
down after they got tens of thousands of health and welfare requests.
My hope is to try to spark some interest in trying to solve the high
volume traffic handling problems with health and welfare messaging in a
disaster with the use of NBEMS. You'd think it would be a fun and
interesting challenge for the NTS system that they would embrace...
we'll see. As was mentioned earlier, most of what NTS is passing in the
way of traffic now are unsolicited messages. I would have some interest
in participating in NTS if I didn't run the risk of picking up a spam
message I'd have to pass. Unfortunately, there's no way to know what
kind of traffic you're going to have to handle until you accept it.
-Dave, KB3FXI
On 11/8/2010 5:12 PM, Mike Stansberry wrote:
On 11/8/2010 16:22, Brian Lloyd wrote:
So, are any of the folks here going around the NTS on their own to work
with their local, regional, state, or federal agencies directly? I know
that is impolitic to suggest but I suspect there is the occasional
disgruntled op who would like to leapfrog the enmired, entrenched, and
embedded establishment. If talking about this openly bothers you, please
contact me directly off-list.
Sure. I don't think we could call it "going around the NTS" but we
don't "preach" the use of NTS to anyone. I've worked in the NTS
for a long, long time but I think the NTS is just too slow in moving
traffic to be useful for anything but routine traffic.
And by the way, just so the person who made the snide remark about
"waiting until all the old folks die off" know: the NTS is not
just CW. Unfortunately, SSB is also used. But there IS an NTSD
network that moves messages across the country using Pactor 1,2 and 3.
But like I said in a previous answer, the real problem is delivery.
73, Mike
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