Formal Message Handling Training - First Training Session Outline

ARES members may be called on at times to originate, relay, or deliver formal messages for our served agencies.

During various drills and real emergencies, we in the Licking County ARES group will interface with the ARRL sponsored National Traffic System or NTS primarily through the Ohio Single Side Band Net ( OSSBN) via county liaison stations.  This NTS group ( and stations) may or may not be part of ARES but we use the procedures and formats developed by the NTS to simplify and standardize our (FORMAL) message handling in ARES. Both organizations complement each other and you will find both active in times of real or Simulated Emergencies and knowing their lingo really helps in time of need.

Listen in to various NTS nets when you can.  Our Ohio Net is on every day on 3972 decimal 5 KiloHerz.

Experience and direction from our  EC or higher authority will dictate whether FORMAL methods or INFORMAL methods will be used in a given situation. More on that later.  This section of our training assumes we are talking about situations where FORMAL messages are required.

The primary objective of these methods and protocols is to facilitate transmission of a properly formatted written formal message from point A to point B such that it arrives exactly as written on the original copy, group for group, character for character, space for space.

Here are a few important highlights we will learn about in this training section:

• Messages filed in the NTS must be capable of being transmitted by any mode without message alteration being required.
• Voice, digital,  and CW nets must be run with methods and protocols to operate effectively and uniformly so that message traffic may be exchanged with efficiency.
• Stations operating in the NTS have the responsibility to promptly relay messages along, deliver messages in a timely fashion, or service undeliverable messages back to the originator. Stations must honor this responsibility.
• Stations operating in the NTS interface directly with the public and served agencies representing all of Amateur Radio. Stations must represent us all well.
• The methods and protocols of the NTS MPG are intended to facilitate achieving these objectives.
• We will use the standard ARRL NTS handbook for our protocol and training bible supplemented with local tailoring for or ARES group. 

In order to learn and remember this material. It takes practice, so this section on traffic handling will require all participants to originate, relay, and prepare messages for delivery.

It really can be fun and knowing how to do it right  is good practice for the real thing.  In order to keep us aware of the system, all alternate Net Control Stations have been asked to originate a message to the EC the week following their net documenting information that has to be forwarded to SEC for activity reports anyhow.  This will give us all additional experience and get us over the stage fright any time we try something new. Keep alert, we may even have to relay a message some night to get it to the EC.

Here are some important links to store on your desktop to prepare for the upcoming formal message handling training exercises.

• ARRL NTS Handbook  ( PDF FORMAT)  Print out at least Chapter I and keep a copy handy.
• ARRL Message Form   ( Print several out if you do not have the pre printed forms)

We will break our training activity into four sessions. The first three will be pretty much textbook. The fourth and final section will include some on- the- air exercises.

Our first on the air discussion over message handling will be discussion of the message preamble from Chapter I of the NTS Handbook.  Study that section and the protocol for elements that included in the preamble prior to the training class scheduled on July 5 and be prepared to ask any questions.  Most of the discussion will be on Use of the Check System to keep track of the word groups in the text of the message.  We will go over several examples and hopefully learn by various examples when and when not to count various text items as part of the check or ( group) count.

We encourage all Licking ARES members to participate in this four week training block and make it  fun and meaningful.

73s    Eldon   W5UHQ

NTS Liaison for Licking County.