San Antonio Hams

The Bexar Operators Group (W5BOG) has unveiled it’s location for the 2010 ARRL Field Day event held on the last full weekend in June.

We will be operating from Choke Canyon State Park in the “Calliham Unit” based in a shelter (cabin). In keeping with the original philosophy of what Field Day should be, we will be testing several new antenna designs and operating our rigs using deep cycle batteries charged by several banks of solar panels. If there is enough wind, we will erect our wind turbine to generate power.

Our operating class will be either 1B Batt. or 1A Batt. Nothing will be pre-planned as this is a test of our emergency communications deployment capabilities. The last time we were at this location for a “Field Day” event was in 2007 when we made several hundred contacts using just a basic “Inverted V” antenna. (2009 – Lost Maples State Park, 2008 – Mustang Island) 

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If you’ve read an earlier blog I posted: San Antonio Hams » Blog Archive » Little Contests For “Little Guns” , I mentioned about studying both the distance away from your anticipated contacts and propagation characteristics. When I worked both the New Mexico QSO Party and the Louisiana QSO Party, I determined my best course of action was to stay on the lower bands, concentrating on 40 meters until way after sunset when I switched to collect a few Qs on 80 meters and then back to 40.

However, this philosophy would not work with the Idaho QSO Party which I intended to compete in. Again, I’d be a low power, single op in this endeavor and being so far away from the state I wanted to work, I’d written off being awarded top operator from out of the state of Idaho. Being so far away from Idaho, I needed to rethink how I’d operate. Attempting to use propagation on my side, and in the time the contest would be starting, I decided that my best bet would be to start out on 15 meters which is always a good bet when working stations 1000+ miles away. My back up band would, of course, be 20 meters.

Hi Lee,

I am trying to locate a ham by the name of William (Bill) Meiners. Bill was located in San Antonio and may well be a SK. His wife was named Loretta, and Bill had a number of children, any one of which may be a HAM. Bill was my Elmer down in the Rio Grande Valley back in the 1950s. About the time he and his family moved to SA, I went into the service, and lost contact with them.

I have looked at the ARRL web site and found on active license for Bill, thus the probability of him being a SK.

Bill was chief engineer for KRIO in McAllen and went to SA as a station engineer for one of the radio stations. Any information on Bill or any of his family would be much appreciated

73

Jack T. Ward Jr. N5TLW
sjward@swbell.net

Response:

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March 6th 2010

The Hill Country REACT Radio Team assisted with the Heart of the Hills Endurance Ride held at the 5400 acre Hill Country State Natural Area located outside of Bandera, Texas.  Team Members Gary Tangrady – K5GST, Al Fields – KE6LGE, Wade Martyn – WB5C and Team Leader Louis Upton – K1STX provided communications for the 25 and 50 mile events. 75 participants total were tracked at 4 checkpoints through the multiple loop course utilizing 2m simplex and the WD5FWP repeater located in Pipe Creek.

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 The WPX contest is based on an award offered by CQ Magazine for working all prefixes. Held on the last weekend of March (SSB) and May (CW), the contest draws thousands of entries from around the world.

This is a great chance to get lots of “new ones” in your log and have fun while doing so. You don’t need to be an expert to join in and you will be competing on a level playing field as there are many categories to compete in such as low power with a simple antenna, etc.  Go to their website: http://www.cqwpx.com/ to learn more about the contest and the operating categories.

It’s a good “tune up” towards “Field Day” as it will help sharpen your ears in picking out weak stations or stations amid interference.

I will be operating as a single operator SSB and later on CW and hope you can work me!

Bob W2IK

Quoted from ARRL news:

In February 2010, the  (AHA) filed a request with the FCC for a blanket waiver of Section 97.113(a)(3) of the Commission’s Rules “to permit hospitals seeking accreditation to use Amateur Radio operators who are hospital employees to transmit communications on behalf of the hospital as part of emergency preparedness drills.”

On March 3, the FCC issued a Public Notice — WP Docket 10-54 — seeking comments if the Commission “should grant AHA’s request for a blanket waiver of Section 97.113(a)(3) to permit amateur operators who are hospital employees to participate in emergency drills that are conducted by hospitals for accreditation purposes and that are not government-sponsored.”Section 97.113(a)(3) specifically prohibits amateur stations from transmitting communications “in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer.”

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The Austin Amateur Radio Club has announced that the 146.940 repeater will require a 107.2hz CTCSS (PL) tone to engage the repeater beginning April 1, 2010.

The AARC repeater is currently the last 146.940 carrier squelch repeater in Texas.

This is NOT an April Fools Day Joke, thus the reason for advance announcements far and wide.  You can program your radio now for using the 107.2 tone, because it will still work fine between now and then.

The repeater will also transmit a 107.2hz CTCSS (PL) tone for users wishing to use the tone squelch feature in their radios which allows them to hear only the Austin repeater.

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Below are a series of pictures from the Bexar Operators Group 160 meter CQ WW SSB contest. 

We traveled to the Calliham Unit of Choke Canyon State Park, about 15 miles west of the town of Three Rivers, which is about 80 miles south of San Antonio.

After checking in, we went to our screened shelter (cabin) only to find that they all had been completely refurbished since our last visit. All the cabins had large air conditioners and two beds! No more blowing up our queen sized air mattress or lugging our window AC unit in the summer.

As you can see, they allow pets, and our two dogs quickly staked out a bed they wanted. I began the task of setting up the radio gear while my XYL, KD5YTN, Krissy, completed her chores of getting the rest of the camping gear out of the truck and assembled.  

We had a problem and had a tough choice to make. It was a very windy day on Friday, with gusts over 25 mph. We decided to wait and see if the wind would die down, as was predicted for Saturday. So, we erected a 160 meter dipole antenna to work the first half of the contest. I would have preferred a loop, but we had neither the real estate nor the time to plot one out and set it up.
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Title: Houston-Austin BP150 Bicycle Event 2 Day
Location: Houston to LaGrange to Austin
Link out: Click here
Description: Info available from Milton N5HMJ or Lee N5NTG who are coordinating a team of hams from San Antonio to help support this worthy event. MS lets us rent our vans or trucks in San Antonio on Friday, equip and drive to Houston, pays for our fuel, provides a hotel room on Friday night in Houston, a cabin (shared) to sleep in Saturday night in LaGrange. They provide us free t-shirts, food, etc., and take real good care of their ham volunteers. Event is usually over around 5pm (or earlier) on Sunday evening.
Start Date: 2010-04-16
End Date: 2010-04-18

Title: Skywarn Training
Location: University of Incarnate Word, Lecture Hall
Link out: Click here
Description: The University of the Incarnate Word. the National Weather Service and the Urban Science Initiative, Inc. will join forces to present the fourth annual Severe Weather Conference on Friday, March 12 and Saturday, March 13, 2010 in the Bonilla Science Hall on the UIW campus.

There is no registration fee for the conference. We ask that you register so that we can provide you with conference materials and seating. You may register by downloading the registration form and faxing it to 210-493-8533 or by email to alex@urbansciencelive.org. We ask that you make your registration no later than March 1, 2010.

You may also register on-site the day of the conference however, we can not guarantee conference materials or available seating.
Start Date: 2010-03-12
End Date: 2010-03-13