San Antonio Hams

Checking my mail box yesterday, I was quite surprised to find an envelope from the “Heartland DX Association”.

This club runs the Nebraska QSO Party, which is held in late April each year.

See: http://www.hdxa.net/  

I had competed in this contest in 2007 and was given a certificate for top score from Texas. In 2008, I again competed but never received a reply nor were any results posted. Since I never knew what really happened, I didn’t compete in the 2009 event.

You can imagine my shock when I just received a certificate for “Tops From Texas” for the 2008 contest!   In 2010 I will compete in other state QSO events and hopefully will get rewarded with more certificates, but in a more timely manner.     You should try a few of these contests as well as they are alot of fun!

Also see: http://sanantoniohams.org/blog/?p=821

  73 Bob W2IK

Santa used Paul Guido’s Vision motorcycle on Saturday December 19th, 2009 to deliver gifts to seven family’s in San Antonio. 
Here is a video from the local station.  Click here, or on the image to play…

It is too funny that they called my Vision a Harley in the title.  It was 65 degrees and Santa was sweating quite a bit in his suit.

Background on Elf Louise The Elf Louise Christmas Project is dedicated to providing a little bit of joy to Bexar County’s (San Antonio) less fortunate children.  The project began in 1969 when our founder, Louise Locker, was a student at Trinity University in San Antonio.

She found that for many San Antonio families, Christmas just did not exist.   Louise began to look for a way to provide a few Christmas presents to some of these children. That first year, with the help of a friend, she collected gifts for children in 13 families.

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Calling all Traffic Net Control Operators!

The Central Texas Traffic Net needs your help.

Please contact Jeremy Davenport (KE5ELI) jeremy@heitx.com if you are interested in continuing to be, or becoming a Net Control Operator for the Central Texas Traffic Net (CTTN).

Stay tuned for the new net frequency in January. We’re looking at trying a couple other area wide repeaters, or using IRLP to link some together, to restore the former multi-county coverage area we used to enjoy on the old 147.14 repeater.

GENERAL CLASS LICENSE COURSE

A Saturday General Class License course, with examinations offered following the course, will be given by Atascosa County Amateur Radio Club, WA5AR, on Saturday’s Jan. 30th, Feb. 6th, Feb. 13th, and Feb. 20th from 10:00 A,M. until 3:00 P.M. with lunch from 12 noon until 1:00 P.M.

Classes will be conducted at the old Atascosa County Jail, 711 Broadway, Jourdanton, TX. (1/2 hour south of San Antonio on SH16 [Poteet Highway]). 

Study book cost of $20.95 and FCC examination is $14.00. Bring photo copies of your current license and photo ID. 

All classes of hams and non-hams are welcome to attend as a review at no charge. 

Contacts: Atascosa and surrounding counties: Hugo South,KK5BZ, (830)281-2408 or hugokk5bz@aol.com; Bexar County: Bob Rodriguez, K5AUW, (210)887-6618 or bobrod@flash.net.

San Antonio ham, W2IK, wins top honors, and this plaque, for his 2009 efforts.

Fellow Hams —

Happy Holidays!  I’m emailing you, as participants of last year’s NMQP, to announce the 2010 New Mexico QSO Party.  You are invited to participate in 2010’s event, which will be sponsored by the Valencia County Amateur Radio Association, and take place Sunday, February 7 from 8:00am MST until 8:00pm MST.

Last year marked the return of the New Mexico QSO Party after a brief hiatus.  Improved promotion, rules, and awards for the winners of various operating categories resulted in 127 participants…plus probably many more who didn’t submit their logs.  Specifically, 44 participated within New Mexico (including 7 mobile stations who activated a combined 24 of New Mexico’s 33 counties), and 73 participated from elsewhere in the United States.  Ten DX stations — from Canada, Lithuania, Azores, Czech Republic, Germany, and Romania — also participated and submitted logs.

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On Friday night, December 18th, Pat & I braved the traffic to join a couple dozen members of the Unusual Suspects Ham Club, an informal group of hams living in Central Texas, from as far north as Cedar Park north of Austin, down south to San Antonio.  Los Generales Mexican Restaurant on Nacogdoches Road, just inside Loop 1604 was the chosen place.  But when Greg N5XO scoped out the location in advance, they forget to tell him about the live entertainment with this really, really loud female singer who never took a break in the 2 1/2 hours were were there.

The dinner was scheduled for 6:30pm, fortunately some folks got there early enough to get the establishment to start clearing out an area big enough to hold all of us.  It was nearly 7pm by the time we were seated, and the food finally got delivered to our tables about 40 minutes later.

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Every year, the Hill Country REACT Team has been helping out the with the Christmas Parade in Sattler, Texas, just east of Canyon Lake. We organize and run the two parade staging areas, mix the two together before they hit the parade route, and ensure that the announcer knows about any changes before they reach his or her location. We get the help of a couple neighboring ham clubs from as far away as 50-70 miles (GVARC, HC Hams).

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We’ve put together a collection of photos taken during the December 12, 2009 Christmas parade in Sattler. We’ve already posted one story about it on this blog a day or so ago, the press release that thanked “Hill Country REACT and their unnamed volunteers” (which we then named).   But now, here are some photos from this event, mostly taken toward the back end of the parade lineup area.

We’re working on putting together another one of our videos, this time from footage taken during the parade, but all video editing takes time and computer resources, both which are frequently in short supply and high demand.

Here are our photos…

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Okay, the long wait is finally over!   We’ve compressed 24 hours of operation down to about 5 minutes, without using the fast forward button.  Amazing, but true!  Of course since we weren’t personally there the whole time to take photos and videos of every single operator, we weren’t able to include more than the three operators shown in the video (recorded live) plus a few others that had their photos taken and forwarded to us.

Most of the footage in the video was provided by Lee N5NTG, with some by Bob W2IK and Wade W5ERX.

Here is the YouTube link to this video…

Here are some photos taken during the 2009 Skywarn Recognition Day during the operations held at the Austin / San Antonio National Weather Service office in New Braunfels…  We’re working on a video as we type this blog entry, so check back later to see some area hams working the bands, without doing Kareoke…  See Video Here..

The following 9 hams worked at this year’s 24 hour event locally…

• Wade W5ERX  – REACT / GVARC
• Louis K1STX  – REACT / Chaparral ARC
• Bob W2IK   – Bexar Operators Group
• JC N5RXS  – SARC
• Pat AD5BR  – REACT
• Lee N5NTG  – REACT
• Gary K5GST  – REACT / GVARC
• Jeremy KE5ELI  – Chaparral ARC
• Al KE6LGE  – REACT
• Wade KE5ZOU – REACT

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