TO: ALL WEST VIRGINIA ARES MEMBERS (OFFICIAL)
ALL ARES AND NON-ARES AMATEURS ANYWHERE (INFORMATION)
FROM: KEN HARRIS WA8LLM WV SECTION EMERGENCY COORDINATOR
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS INCORPORATED
WOOD COUNTY BULLETIN NR 10.48 DATE: November 28, 2010
SUBJECT: CAN YOU COPY A MESSAGE?
How many times have you heard voice nets start out by saying the net is for handling traffic into or out of an area, buy, sale, and trade, and for general ragchew? Most of the time there is no traffic to be handled, but would you be ready to take a message if one needed to be passed.
With the use of computers and cell phones, the art of handling Amateur Radio messages is slipping away. There may be a time you check into a net, and someone says they have a message that needs to be delivered. Would you know how to take the message?
Nets are not only for telling everyone what you have been doing that day, or for the past week, they are also for training, and some of that training is in the form of learning to send or receive messages. Since most of the messages that are handled by Amateur Radio, are in the form of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League)RADIOGRAM, that should be the form to train with.
It would be nice to have some one bring a message to each net to pass to someone else. That way everyone learns how to send and receive messages. You would be surprised how many mistakes are made while sending and receiving messages when you are first learning.
Some day you may have to take a message and deliver it to someone else. It would be nice to know how to do it.
Ken Harris WA8LLM
WCEC
Wood County WV