The ARRL Radiogram: A Dead Medium? Is This True?

For an untold number of decades here in Albany, there had been a nightly Capital District Repeater Net held at 6:30PM on the local 146.94 machine. The net's sole task was to generate or forward text messages in the form of something referred to as an American Radio Relay League Radiogram, which looked and functioned very much like a Western Union Telegram.
While the WU telegram was a commercially available paid product, the Radiogram was a non-commercial no-cost service provided by amateur radio operators in many localities.

The basic idea is to either verbally recite the message over the air or to send the same via CW or Morse code from the originating location to the point of destination. Since such messages might be forwarded over line of sight VHF pathways, there could be many steps along the way before the message arrives to whom it is intended. For that reason, there is a fairly strict message format to insure content integrity.

The CDRN expired due largely to a lack of interest and the eventual death of some of the major players. In response, the Troy Amateur Radio Association decided to pick up the gauntlet to preserve and carry on the assignment. The TARA group, perhaps recognizing that the amateur radio hobby may be in a long slow tailspin of its own, has being doing everything it can to keep interest in ham radio peaked in the region.

The club has sponsored RTTYandPSK31 contests, does a big Field Day each year, is heavy on public service and has recently resuscitated the old net with a slightly revised moniker: The Capital District Traffic Net.

Not being a traffic person, most of what I hear in message content seems insignificant, something that could be more easily done over a land line, cellphone or by e-mail. However I also recognize that what is going on is a daily message handling training exercise. This training would hopefully insure readiness to act in the event of emergency.

But then I came across this document which can been found at Dead Media:
---
Dead medium: The Amateur Radio Relay League Radiogram
From: From: jort@teleport.com (Dan Howland)
Source(s): QST Magazine ("Devoted Entirely to Amateur Radio"), February, 1932 == Advertisement
"A.R.R.L. FORMS FOR THE AMATEUR
"Official A.R.R.L. Message Blanks Most convenient form. Designed by the Communications Department of the A.R.R.L. Well printed on good bond paper. Size 8" x 7". Put up in pads of 100 sheets. One pad postpaid for 35" or three pads for $1.00.
"Message Delivery Cards Neatest, simplest way to deliver a message to a near-by town. On U.S. stamped postals, 2" each. On plain cards (for Canada, etc.) 1" each, postpaid."
(((Printed at the the bottom of the Radiogram is the following:)))
"THIS MESSAGE WAS TRANSMITTED FREE OF CHARGE BY AMATEUR RADIO STATIONS OF THE AMERICAN RADIO LEAGUE. ANSWER WILL BE SENT FREE BY FILING AT THIS STATION."
(((It appears that amateur radio enthusiasts received and relayed messages as a point of honor. Was this something people did rather than go to Western Union? Was it cheaper to ask a radio geek to send out your message and hope it would eventually get there? Or was it a service offered by amateurs for people trapped in the boondocks == off exploring forbidden temples or some such? (The Kon Tiki crew, for example, relayed their position to stateside amateur radio hams.)
(((Is this still done? Does anyone know anything more about these radio relay postcards? The articles in this magazine are so filled with radio jargon and 30s slang that it's hard to understand anything but the ads. Sample from page 27: "A Squirt who used too much of what we used to call 'Lake Erie Swing' or sent with a slobbery fist or cluttered up the air with too many CQ's... was called upon by a committee, the chairman of which... exhibited and explained the workings of an instrument known as an *Uggerumph.*" == Dan)))
(((bruces remarks: the crystal-set zealots of the Amateur Radio Relay League seem to have been spiritual ancestors of the Internet. How does one classify these ARRL networked postcards in the media spectrum? Are they "mail," "radio," or "person-to-person ham narrowcasting?" Perhaps Radio Relay postcards are best understood as a dead precursor of email.)))
Dan Howland (jort@teleport.com)
Journal of Ride Theory,
P.O. Box 2044
Portland, OR 97208-2044
---
So, is this true? Is the ARRL Radiogram truly as dead as this fellow says? Is sending messages in this fashion as outmoded as the original Nintendo monochrome Game Boy?

The answer is out there...somewhere.

The N2FNH Magnetic Tape library!

For this week's episode of the Random Access Thought for the week ending June 28th the subject is: The N2FNH Magnetic Tape Library. Along with piles of WAV and MP3 encrusted memory sticks and stacks of Red Book compact disc audio storage devices, there is an older analog magnetic tape library here which houses everything from elements of sound design which I developed at various radio stations in years gone by to a fairly extensive beautiful music library on 10 and a half inch reels and dollar store cassettes.

But for the purposes of This Week in Amateur Radio, I culled (an archaic verbal equivalent to "downloading") material relating a little closer to the hobby. Our host this week is Cigman Krasnov who puffs his way through five stellar audio clips: three are off the air recordings from amateur radio repeaters along with an audio snapshot of my Number One and Only Son Zachary when he was but two years of age.

The last clip is the kind of thing I used to do when there was absolutely nothing else to do with my discretionary time. Sliced, diced and patched together in 1980, it took about two hours hunched over an Ampex 440 full track tape machine with a editing block and some splicing tape. The same exercise can be accomplished in what, maybe five minutes on a digital editor.

As a sidebar, I have two analog tape machines here, a ReVOX A77 for playback of all these moldy oldies plus a ReVOX B77 slow speed machine for air checking WBCQ and CoastToCoast AM. I have Howard Stern's terrestrial radio sign-off show along with one of Phil Hendrie's retirement shows.
For the Random Access thought, the Ancient Amateur Archives plus all the latest happening amateur radio news and views, be sure to download (the new verbal equivalent for "to cull") This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #794 and This Week in Amateur Radio International Edition #179 before you do anything else. Mach Schnell.

Kids' Day at the Schenectady Museum!

This week's Random Access Thought for the week ending June 21st was recorded on location at the Schenectady Museum back in early January of this year. The Schenectady Museum Amateur Radio Association sponsored Kid's Day 2008 which was held at SMARA's big ham station inside the museum. Children and their parents were invited to drop by, have a look at all the gear and then give the kids a chance to see what amateur radio is all about. Zach and I made the pilgrimage: Zach got a shot getting on HF 40 meters while I canvassed and interviewed the kids for this special Random Access Thought.

In the associated RAT promo, Zach and his pal Bix Nix are exploring the incredibly high-ceilinged and heavily darkened halls of Big City Museum. This promo also featured the debut of Cigman Krasnov who apparently does recorded announcements for Big City Museum. In the meantime, be sure to download the podcast for TWIAR edition #793 and TWIARi edition #178 right away!

Takes a Licking and Keeps on Speaking!

It occurred to me the other day that my Timex Speak-Easy is still telling the time. And tell the time it does because the Timex Speak-Easy is an electronic talking clock which employs a voice chip to make announcements each half hour.I acquired this device at a Caldor here in Albany back in 1981 and it has been doing it's town crier thing ever since. I first observed such a clock at the residence of a fellow ham, Jeff - WA2AIB. The clock was located in the bedroom but the audio was cranked up loud enough so it could be heard throughout the apartment.

My Speak-Easy has taken it's toll of power failures and surges. Some years back, Jeff's Speak-Easy failed in such a way that it drifted afloat in a sea of unregulated time, announcing each half hour pretty much whenever it felt like.

The Speak-Easy has made a few vocal appearances in the Random Access Thought and I have several WAV files stored in the voluminous N2FNH Sound Effects Library which, by the way, some day I should publish. It's first appearance was in early 2004. The episode concerned my subconscious inner self suddenly wishing to have an animated dialogue with my more conscious, though momentarily unconscious outer self. The Timex on the floor announces that "The Time...is... 2...37...AM". To this day, my little bedtime buddy sits at the foot on the floor so I do have to actually get up to to shut off his relentless ding dongs.

Here's hoping this report does not jinx my Timex Speak-Easy. The clock has been around so long, it's part of the family!

THE TELNET NEWS!

Back in 1996, two things occurred which got me interested in amateur packet radio big time. First was a trip to the Milton Ham Fest near Burlington where I sat in on a seminar: the discussion detailed the nuts and bolts of packet radio, which I found to be only moderately interesting. It was during the question and answer session when someone in the audience asked about a connection between amateur packet radio and the Internet. He had overheard a QSO where reference was made to a regional packet radio Internet Gateway. Two ruling packet gurus, one local to the area and the other from Montreal, spoke up and verified the QSO but were very quick to downplay the value of the gateway lamenting that at 1200 baud making use of such a device would be an exercise in frustration.

I suspected a cover up. My interest was peaked. I recalled earlier conversations concerning LONNY where amateur radio operators employed by NBC Television used AX25 nodes to link London and Manhattan, using a commercial undersea cable. But this was different. Here was something I might be able to access myself.

The second event was when I obtained a free IBM PS25 computer. Armed with the PS25 and a KPC3, I quickly located the gateway in question. AMGATE:KA2TCQ was situated at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, 150 miles to the north. The state of the regional packet network was in good shape so it was no problem to access AMGATE:KA2TCQ and then telnet out into the world.

Unlike eQSO and ECHOLINK, packet Internet Gateways received no publicity in any of the amateur radio journals so any knowledge gained was through hands on experience. This inspired me to publish an electronic newsletter known as THE TELNET NEWS, which I distributed globally through the packet BBS mail forwarding system and via Internet e-mail subscription. I published the TELNET NEWS from 1999 through 2004. Toward the end, as the regional packet radio network here in upstate New York tail spun into irreversible degeneration and decay through unintentional negligence and outright abandonment, I shifted from transmitting by radio to keystroking by way of the Internet. At this late date, I still keep the Winpack telnet program on the computer for the occasional foray into the digital world of text. The global network is a now lot smaller but it still has it's followers.

Recently, I discovered something I forgot. On the TWIAR website, some of my TELNET NEWS are hidden away but they are easily accessible. Just check my list of favorite links on this very same blog for some vintage copies of the TELNET NEWS. Most of the information will be out of date but THE TELNET NEWS is an ASCII time capsule chronicling the way things were in a largely unseen galaxy of the amateur radio universe!

The Yada Yada on Blogs!

On the next edition of the Random Access Thought for the week ending June 15th, My Number One and Only Son Zachary James Baran is the program host and the subject is BLOGS! Broadcasting virtually live and direct from one of Big City Cable's largest underground Internet tubes, Zach brings us up to date on the remarkable history and incredible popularity of Internet blogs! Tune in to This Week in Amateur Radio over your local repeater, the 50,000 watt shortwave giant WBCQ or via podcast for the Random Access Thought! Go get TWIAR edition #792 and TWIARi edition #177 right away!

Here's a transcript of the RATBLOG script that Zach followed:

Oh hello there! Zach Baran here! The other day, my Dad N2FNH said to George W2XBS: "I think there shall be blogs on the official This Week in Amateur Radio website". So, after many weeks of intense study, investigation and miscellaneous delay, the TWIAR website now has staff blogs so everyone can get the latest inside poop on what's going behind the scenes.
But what exactly is a blog anyway?

It turns out the word 'blog" is short for web log. A blog is a website with a journal of personal opinion. The word "blog" can also be used as a verb: as in "to blog". That is, to add or maintain content. There are all kinds of blogs. Some can be defined by type.

While many blogs report on contemporary news events, others are personal diaries. Blogs can be anything you want! There are art blogs, photo blogs, video blogs. You name it: There's a blog out there for everyone on any subject you can possibly imagine.

The entire universe of blogs is called the blogosphere and a group of local content blogs is called a bloghood. And there are special search engines you can use to locate specific blog subjects. Some of the better known search engines include blogscope, bloglines and Technorati. Technorati is one of the best known engines which offer up-to-date detail on blogs around the world.

The idea of blogging first appeared on virtual radar screens in the late 1990's and soon became front page for their role in not only breaking news headlines, but also by shaping details and placing their own spin in the headlines, a clear departure from the more traditional objective journalism.

Those in the know say that blogging may have peaked in 2007 with about 100 million personal blogs posted on the Internet. On the flip side, some 200 million additional bloggers have stopped publishing and have abandoned their efforts, leaving behind a whole bunch of digital detritus.

The whole idea of Internet blogs goes back to USENET and commercial online services, like CompuServe and Genie and also Bulletin Board Systems. Hams are familiar with BBSes through Amateur Packet Radio and HF Pactor where time delayed on-air discussions in message form were once very popular.

On the Internet, diaries were distant ancestors where users could text their personal soap operas for a virtual audience to read. That is, if anyone was so interested.

Right now, blogs are such a mainstream thing that even some of the staff here at this Week in Amateur Radio are doing their own blogs. Even I have my own blog!

My Dad says blogs can be a useful add-on resource for amateur radio club websites. A lot of effort goes into ham pages but many of them are one-way streets. Blogs can be a new way for a more personal one-on-one contact between hams over the Internet, just like packet radio was many years ago.

So in the meantime, check us out! Go to www.twiar.org and click on "STAFF BLOGS". You will be amazed at what you read!

This is Zach Baran, signing off!

Who ARE Those People? Part 4 - The Nixs and The Bobs!

Over the last few years, while developing the Krasnovs as a core family presence to compliment the Random Access features, a number of ancillary characters have become manifest and have also become intertwined with each other in various ways. In addition to Zach's 40 story 400 ton green scaly dog, my Number One and Only Son also has a digital pal who goes by the name of Bix Nix.

Bix is a borderline nerd who speaks with an ever so slight lisp. In early features, Bix croaked out a mechanized beep at the end of each sentence he uttered. As Bix approached puberty, the beep faded out and, like Zach, his voice has begun to change. While Zach approaches any unknown fearlessly, Bix tends to be more apprehensive. You can hear Bix in our new TWIAR BLOG promo.

Mister Nix, first name unknown, is Bix's father who is also a borderline nerd who also speaks with an ever so slight lisp. While Bix is a good boy, Mister Nix may have gangland connections. Not much more is known. In the meantime, Mister Nix has voiced several promos and has discussed at length supernatural communications via a recent Random Access Thought.

While on the supernatural, there are also the two Bobs. The first Bob is a reasonably friendly extraterrestrial, home planet unknown, who tends to announce very expansively, much like a cheesy two bit stage performer. Bob occasionally dates TINK, a lovely imaginary visage who we shall detail later.

The other Bob has been dead since the Great Depression. His real name is Seymour but his good friends call him Bob. Like Boleslav Krasnov, Seymour has a distinctly Coney Island dialect. He has been known to call "CQ MARS" over the HF ham bands without benefit of any radio. Apparently, the dead can do that. It also appears that Seymour does not sit at the right hand of G*d.

In our next installment: Tick Tock, TANK and TINK!

The RATParts CAB Files at TWIAR!

Next time you swing by www.twiar.org, check the left side column on the main page. There is a separate option for the Random Access Thought archive. Should you click on this link, you will be connected to www.twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts.

This is a public repository of Random Access Thoughts, Random Access Files, associated special feature promos and QSL card offers. But as you glance at the list you will see that the files carry a .CAB extension. The CAB or Cabinet format is an archiving scheme employed by most Microsoft programs, including those used to install the Windows operating system. CAB files offer both file compression and file grouping.

So why are the Random Access features stored in this way? The answer has less to do with file compression and more to do with file protection. When production of the Random Access features shifted from the W2XBS palatial estate in Poestenkill to the N2FNH laboratory here in Albany, it was observed that uploaded audio files to our FTP server would sometimes arrive in corrupted form. As time progressed, this became a more consistent and a more persistent issue. So George and I performed a few experiments.

First, some test WAV files were uploaded. They arrived in corrupted form. Next, the same files were compressed as a ZIP file and were uploaded. They arrived in corrupted form. The next step involved yet another file compression trial, encapsulating WAV into CAB, which were subsequently uploaded. They arrived intact. After multiple launches, it appeared that the Random Access special features encased as CAB files were bulletproof!

Like a ZIP file, you can use WinZIP or IZArc to unshackle the delicate contents and lovingly place them on your hard drive or digital audio playback device.

Radio Pagers, Beepers and Boleslav Krasnov!

This week's edition of the Random Access Thought was recorded back in early January and introduces Mother Radio's better half Boleslav Krasnov who quietly reflects back on the era of radio pagers and beepers. Boleslav is a senior technician of over forty years experience at Canarsie Wireless in Brooklyn.

Boleslav Krasnov's personality and vocal intonations are largely based on a fellow ham, Barry Groupp - N2HDW of Pearl River, who sadly passed away a few years ago. Amateur radio operators living in the metropolitan New York area will recall Barry as one super enthusiastic tech guy when it came to amateur repeaters and repeater system inter-ties. In fact, Barry worked closely with Ike - WB2BQW in the construction and development of the Northeast Connect, a massive network of VHF and UHF repeaters covering seven states and more!

Barry Groupp's website is available for viewing at http://www.qsl.net/n2hdw/. Ike's location is on the same block at http://www.qsl.net/wb2bqw/.

In the associated Random Access Thought Promo, Marilyn discusses another one of her curious quirks with Mother Radio. In addition to her pastime of watching paint dry, Marilyn possesses an impressive assortment of classic radio pagers and beepers, all linked to the same telephone number.

In our QSL offer, Cigman and Marilyn analyze some listener response from the mysterious "Robert", a Number One Fan who complains about everything he hears on This Week in Amateur Radio.

And finally, in a special introductory promo, Zach's pal Bix Nix cruises the Internet and discovers that Staff Blogs are now accessible from the official This Week in Amateur Radio. Yeah, you too can be on the inside track of this brand new admittedly self-indulgent TWIAR web page feature!