Message-Id: <20050502222928.VCGX2434.imf24aec.mail.bellsouth.net@[68.212.105.216]> On 2005-05-02 [log in to unmask] said: >I always used the writer for traffic and handling nets. The biggest >challenge was EAN the Eastern Area Net on cw. Its a fast net and >have people going everywhere hi hi. YEs area nets are a challenge. I know people do it with a brailler. Rapid nets where I didn't want the speech interrupting what I'm listening to such as cw nets are one reason I built my little batch file net logging programs under dos. Even without the screen reader I can enter data fairly reliably from the command line and view it when I want. FOr example while sitting at a dos prompt I type st for a station logging into the net. IF he has traffic I type tl for each piece he list followed by his call and the destination. TO get it to at least show in the traffic list I might type zt to just zap a line of text to the traffic list. I can catch up on the listings while somebody is sending traffic on freq. The reason I have two different methods for appending data to the traffic list is simple. these days nts nets from region and above show how many pieces of traffic were presented as well as how many were actually handled. Those presented are "listed" and those handled are "cleared. SO for example, if kk3f checks into central area with 3 for region 9 and 1 for region ten I'll be typing four commands after the original zt which might say something such as: kk3f 3n 1t THen wh ile something else is happening I'll type tl kk3f rn9 Do this twice more and then the same for Pat's region ten. WHen the traffic is cleared my little programs say it's "distributed" or cleared, but I've got a problem. My machine has a ct.bat which does something else, so we call it distributed and type dt followed by the station holding it and who he or she sent it to. At the end of the net session my software counts the appearances of such words as "listed" notice the quotes around listed or "cleared" same with quotes around cleared, and automatically appends to my net report fi le the number of occurrences of each. Have run busy nets with a brailler and a slate and stylus. eVery now and then I make myself run one with a slate and copy traffic that way also so as to stay in practice. HOWever with an easy to use interface the computer does make things easier there. WOn't be doing that in the next week or so however on local nets because our stm is quite ill and he's also Louisiana cw net manager and I'll be taking reports for him for station activity and public service honor role as well as cw net reports from last month still outstanding. I want the reliability and hate using headphones, especially at the hospital station. The slate and stylus seems to make me lose things when trying to listen to some of these fast cw ops. tO those of you who are vhf/uhf only ops or haven't really gotten into traffic handling, even if it ain't your thing do a bit of it. When the stuff hits the fan you'll be glad you have done it. YOur local emergency coordinators will thank you even if they're not aware enough to know it yet. 73 de nf5b Richard Webb Electric Spider Productions "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --- Benjamin Franklin, NOvember 1755 from the Historical review of Pennsylvania