San Antonio Hams

I would like to congratulate Stuart Rohre K5KVH – Red Cross AEC in Travis and Williamson County.  Stuart received the West Gulf Division Excellence award – as the EMCOMM Ham of the year 2012.  The presentation was made by Coy  Day, retired ARRL West Gulf Division Director and Dr. David Woolweaver – Director of West Gulf Division ARRL.

In receiving the honor Stuart’s first words were in praise of his team mates – Joe Fisher K5EJL and Bob Morgan WB5AOH who have supported W5KA Red Cross Station in many drills and deployments.

A member of Travis County ARES since 1975, Stuart began working with Red Cross in earnest in 1991.  Stuart had his baptism of fire serving Red Cross in the Jarrell Tornadoes of 1997.  He was the first ARES operator at the chapter and was asked to organize communications for the disaster.  Public Safety communications were out!

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The Unusual Suspects UNCLUB group came together in 2006, during that time I think we as a GROUP have done an amazing job of promoting Amateur Radio. I thought I would share some of our events and Activities. It is  these projects and the friendships of an incredible group of people that make me proud to be part of this fine group.   - Greg N5XO

Website: We built a new website, http://www.wx5us.us/, where we featured photos and news from various ham radio events that our members participated in, plus a list of our proud members.

Tower Raising:  I think we have had more tower raising projects than about any group around. Since every thing we do is about Taco’s… it would explain why as a group we seem to be getting fatter {grin}. We have helped  each other raise towers, design systems and improve our stations. I am impressed with our accomplishments. When we first started operating simplex like many ham’s and clubs we relied on repeaters and  our stations showed it … now we have stations that anyone can be proud of … and have outstanding simplex coverage.

In fact within the members of our group…

• we have 3 more tower projects coming along in the next month to month in a half…
• 2 of them 72ft towers with large antenna arrays….

PROMOTING SIMPLEX AND WEAK SIGNAL  is our thing {grin}

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FIELD DAY IS JUNE 22-23rd 2013

I’m currently compiling a list of clubs or individual stations who are making plans for Field Day 2013.  If you want me to share your location and hours of operation (some clubs don’t run full 24 hours, and/or shut down during the night and resume in the morning), please send an email to info@sanantoniohams.org with “Field Day 2013″ in the subject line to get my attention. 

Info updated 06/11/2013

Please include any details you want shared, such as a talk-in frequency especially if you are on private property or a hard to find location.  Let us know if there are any admission fees (such as operating from a public or private park, etc.).  If you require RSVP, please provide the official contact info for that purpose.  If you are limiting the hours of operation, such as taking a recess during the middle of the night and resuming the next morning, let me know that also.  I know you don’t just want folks to show up for meal time, especially if they aren’t a member of your club.

After sifting thru the thousands of emails on my computer, I also visited the ARRL official site locator page to see what I could see.

And then I looked for San Antonio / Central Texas area on the map, and said “double wow!”  I know of several clubs not shown on this map, as of today as of 06/11/2013, who plan on conducting a FD event.  Click on the screen shot to the right for details.  The little red map parkers are those FD locations registered as of 06-01-2013 with ARRL.  The little comment boxes are the locations that I’m aware of, where clubs are planning their event.  I’ve added some event stations below, from Bandera,  San Marcos, Austin, Kerrville and Corpus Christi, that do not show up on the San Antonio metro map image that I posted here.

VE Testing Notes: There will be 2 VE Test Sessions active the morning of Field Day in the San Antonio metro area: 

• SARC will be conducting a VE Test Session at 10am on June 22nd, at the Great Northwest Library off Grissom Road & Timberwilde Rd on the NW side of San Antonio. This is their normal date / time / location for such test sessions.  Contact Pat AD5BR at 210-273-5927 or hamtests@gmail.com for info.  Pat will have FD information available that morning for the new hams to go visit afterwards.
• GVARC will be conducting a VE Test Session sometime during the day on Saturday, June 22nd, at the site of their Field Day. See location info listed below. 

CLUBS known to be participating in Field Day in South Central Texas include…

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On Sunday morning, June 2nd, after the rain had passed thru the area, some area ham radio operators showed up at Grumpy’s Shop (ham radio store) to install new antennas and tower, so that hams could use the station inside when the store was open. For many years, the San Antonio Radio Club (SARC – W5SC) had an operating station inside the Kcomm Ham Radio Store on Gulfdale Rd (west side of the airport), but when that store closed a year ago, the club lost their club station.

Grumpy’s Shop is located at 2002 CeeGee Lane, San Antonio, TX 78217.  That’s 2 traffic lights outside (north) of Loop 410, off Broadway, between Broadway and the airport, on the corner of CeeGee Lane and Aero Street.  (Google map link here http://goo.gl/maps/7DX3f )

Our thanks to William DW9HGF/W5 for providing the following photos taken during this operation.  Notice the airplanes taking off in the background?

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The 2nd Annual South Central Texas Meet, Greet and Swap Fest, sponsored by the Big Texas Radio website,  was held today,  June 1, 2013,  from 8am-1pm, at the Cibolo City Park,  608 W FM-78, Cibolo, TX 78108. The park is also known as Niemietz Park.  Free Admission, Free Food, Free Door Prizes.

About 150 hams showed up for this free event.   We don’t know  how they do it, or how they fund it, but the Hams from Big Texas Radio website are the sponsors.

They don’t charge admission nor table fees. They do provide free sodas, water, and a full BBQ Catered Meal, plus lots of high dollar door prizes, including the Grand Prize this year, a brand new Kenwood TS-480SAT HF Radio, still in it’s original box.  Other door prizes include a Baofeng UV-3R Dual Band Handheld 2m and 70cm radio, Weller 40 watt soldering station wlc100, donations from GrumpyShop.net and other hams, and multiple $20 cash door prizes and a top cash prize of $103.  You had to be present to win any prizes, and the drawing was held around noon time.

Here are some of my photos that I took during the event…

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Gary over at Grumpy Shop (ham store) is planning to install some antennas on Sunday, June 2nd, starting at 9am.

We were asked to extend an open invitation to any hams wanting to come help, or just watch.   The store will likely be open,  but he is NOT normally open on Sundays.  Store phone 210-829-8030

Grumpy Shop is located at 2002 CeeGee Lane, Zip 78217, which is on the east side of the San Antonio International Airport, off Broadway, north of Loop 410. 

Here is a Google map Link http://goo.gl/maps/mccb7

Directions: From Loop 410 in San Antonio, go north on Broadway to the second traffic light (CeeGee Lane) and turn left (toward the airport).  Go to the end of the street, and Grumpy Shop is on the left corner of that intersection. White one story building with a chain link fence around the side parking lot (Aero Street).

This will be the 3rd annual American Hero 25k Relay Run to be held in San Antonio and it will be held at a new location from previous years.

Wheatley Heights Sports Complex is a brand new facility on the east side of San Antonio, near Houston & IH-10. This facility is on the opposite side of IH-10 from the American Red Cross HQ (shown in picture with a red cross.)

The aftermath of the 1998 flood that caused the evacuation of the American Red Cross, was the prompt to get a $7.5million grant to build this complex, using funds from private and public sources, including tax money from the Hotel & Rental Car tax fund.  This area was devastated by the flood and all of the houses were destroyed.  The city purchased the property from the owners and relocated them out of the flood plain. There are signs near the parking lots warning about this area will be subject to flooding.

You can click on the photo on the right for a full size image of the proposed route layout.  Or click on  the photo on the left that I “borrowed” from the Wheatley Heights Sports Complex website  and added some directional arrows and markers over the actual facility.

This location is so new, less than a year or two old, that even Google Earth doesn’t have an updated areal photo showing the existence of this sports complex.

We only need a handful of hams since the route is out & back. If you want to volunteer, please contact Lee N5NTG at info@sanantoniohams.org or call 210-771-7075 (voice/text).

Even though I always somehow seem to end up “in charge” of these types of events, I could NOT do this without all the help I get from other Ham Radio operators who “appear out of the woodwork” when I most need them.

Some of you volunteered, changed your personal plans, and showed up to help, even though you were hurting, such as Earlene Harris K5DEH who had just broken a rib a couple days before the event.  Some of you practically “demanded” that I allow you to participate! 

GVAR’s 147.000 repeater cooperated with us all day, with no major glitches noticed.  GVARC had a couple of hams standing by monitoring the repeater, and the event, to be sure it stayed up and running.  We never needed to switch over to either backup repeater frequency.

The weather cooperated with us and we didn’t have many areas of the route with water on them. I know of at least one road that was reported as “wet, but just puddle, not running across the road.”  I promised Paul Yura & his crew that I’d try to get some even t-shirts if they “made the bad weather go away,” so I guess I need to keep that promise. J

I’m currently accepting “after action debriefing reports” from any hams who worked the event.  Please email those reports to me at tdc@sanantoniohams.org when you get the time.  There should be a volunteer party in a few months. If that happens, I’ll put the word out and collect your RSVP’s at that time.

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Special Olympics Spring Games

Hill Country REACT will be operating a special events station at the 2013 AREA 20 Special Olympics Spring Games. The guest operator will be W2IK, who will concentrate on 40 meters, around 7.270 MHZ from about 9AM until he poops out in the afternoon. Feel free to work this station, send a QSL card and a SASE to the QRZ address of  K5HCR, since this is the callsign he will be using.

Guest ops are welcome to join in at the operation:  Location is at the Frank Mata Stadium, 1922 S. General McMullen in the “athlete village’. If you hear us, work us and please post on the cluster!  Back in 2006, we made over 130 contacts in 4 hours. Help us break that record.