Sorry you missed the training session last evening.
I will send herewith the material we went over, and perhaps you can join us next Thursday for
the second training session.
This is what was presented last evening:
We as amateurs might at any time be called upon to handle written traffic for a "third party"
if "normal" communications are interrupted or overloaded.
Commercial communications infrastructure in Alaska has certain vulnerabilities and there are a number of
possible scenarios that could occur at any time which would cause the general public
or any of several "served agencies" to invoke our communications support.
What then is "Third party written Traffic"?
The FCC defines it as:
A message between the control operator of one amateur station
(first party)and the control operator of a second amateur station (second party)
on behalf of another person (third party).
Reference: FCC rules, Part 97, Section 97.3,a,46.
When we get to handling traffic for a "third party" the business of doing it
becomes serious, and it has to be done correctly.
Our performance in handling traffic for others has a lot to do with how the amateur
radio service is perceived by the general public or any served agency
we might be involved with. This can make or break us as a viable and useful resource
in times of emergency.
Informal traffic between two licensed amateurs, written or otherwise, is not "third party"
traffic because there is no "third party" involved. Also, if a few small "errors" creep in
during handling, generally the "content" of the traffic gets across just fine. So it is
generally no big deal.
But this not so when we are dealing with a third party.
Our objective (and our only objective) when handing written traffic for any third
party is to reproduce the message from the originator who writes it, to the recipient
who receives it, "word for word" and "character for character" EXACTLY as written,
in a timely manner and regardless of mode or mode changes enroute.
Now that we know what third party traffic is, and what our
objective is, we will start by considering what we need to get from any third party who wishesto send a message to some distant place by amateur radio.
The general public, and probably the representative of any "served agency"
that requests our help with a message will probably have little or no idea as to what
we actually have to have from them in order to properly route a written message over
an amateur network successfully to its destination...
They will need some assistance.
There are four important items to consider here.
Any written message should be sent TO a person by name. A "name-to".
There must be a physical location specified where the recipient can be found
in order to effect delivery.
A city or town and postal code (if known) should be specified.
If possible, a known good telephone number for the recipient should be included.
Lastly, we need to get contact information from the message originating party where
they can be reached in case there is a reply to their message, or if problems
come up and it cannot be delivered.
Next, we have to assist the originator so the message text is written in plain
English in as few words as possible consistent with adequately getting the meaning
across to the recipient.
The text Content must not be illegal or in "code", nor must it contain symbols that
cannot be transmitted by normal phone or CW modes.
Punctuation should not be used. But if punctuation absolutely MUST be used
it should be spelled out in words..."comma" "period" etc. For an interrogative
we use the written word "QUERY" instead of the question mark.
Generally, to separate the parts of the text, we insert
the character "X" (XRAY), instead of the word "PERIOD".
The general convention we use is "twenty five words or less". A message text
of this length will easily fit on a half sheet of plain paper or on any of the
pre-printed message blanks that are available.
Brevity is important because it conserves circuit time in transmission. If the message
text content is very long, consider getting the originator to break it up into separate
shorter messages.
Interaction stressing these principles in message origination during ARES exercises
with representatives of served agencies during practice drills or
exercises when no actual communications emergency exists will go a long way in avoiding
problems when an actual emergency occurs.
This concluded our first training session in formal traffic handling.
We Suggest you read in the "Public Service section of the ARRL web page at ARRL.org
on the internet prior to our next session if possible.
In the next session we will go into getting the originator's message traffic properly organized
on paper, and begin the study the four parts of a formal message:
the preamble,
address,
text
and signature.
We will study in detail the FORMAT of a radio message, which is the order in which
the four parts of all messages are written in original copy, transmitted over the
radio and copied down by the receiving operator.
Ed AL7N
STM Alaska