Episodes

Is NTS, the National Traffic System, stuck hopelessly in the past, or is it leading the charge into the future? In this conversation with North Carolina Section Traffic Manager Dave Roy W4DNA, we find the answer is somewhere in the middle. Most traffic is still passed (laboriously) by voice or CW, but some... mostly in the middle of the system where messages transit from one region to another... flows quickly by HF digital systems (RMS Express, Pactor 3).

Gary challenges Dave about whether hams do what we claim we can: send health and welfare messages on behalf of people in disaster areas who are cut off with friends and relatives unable to reach them. And he asks if the system could really handle thousands of messages flooding in at once in a mass disaster if hams actually succeeded in originating them.

This episode was recorded at the RARSfest- the Raleigh NC Hamfest on April 2, 2016. The opening celebrates the event of the 250th episode with a couple of unsolicited testimonials from fans who approached Gary as he wandered the aisles taking pictures.

As of April, 2016, when the old HamRadioNow web site was decommissioned and this new one was built, we had 250 Episodes 'in the can' (that's film-speak for 'done'). And that really represented over 300 programs, because many Episodes had multiple parts. Many of those 'parts' were an hour or more themselves.

There's probably no way we'll redo separate web pages for all those old episodes. We're thinking maybe some pointers to evergreens, to 'best of's' or other 'must-see' for hams finding the show for the first time. But fully indexing all the old content for easy reference is just beyond our means.

THIS web format allows Blogs. And for new programs, we're thinking maybe a blog entry is the best way to almost automatically update the site. It also allows you to make comments on each episode, and have them in one coherent place. Maybe this will work! We'll begin with the new one, Episode 250, and see how it goes.

For Episodes 1-249, we'll point you to the real source of all our media: www.YouTube.com/HamRadioNow.

But one more thing…
I need to make Apple Podcasts happy by putting some audio here. So let’s go back the start. This is the audio from Episode 1, back in February, 2012.

Episode 250: NTS... D (as in Digital)

Episodes 1-249 - on YouTube