San Antonio Hams

Andrew Watson KD5NNN has kindly emailed us 24 photos that he took during the first day of the Field Day weekend event in San Antonio, TX.  This was the combined FD event with 6 clubs participating.   Unfortunately, he managed to catch me in some of these photos, and I’m normally on the other side of a camera when photos are taken. Oh well, fair is fair, I guess. 🙂

And as usual, please help us in identifying the hams in each photo. If we’ve failed to identify a person properly or not at all, please post a comment letting us know which photo to update and we’ll get it taken care of.

Here are his photos….  He’s promised me more photos later on….

Enjoy!

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We’ve had a really busy day here in San Antonio so far, starting around 8am to set up our stations, get banners up near the entrance, sign in table ready, wireless logging networks up and tested, and of course the pointy end of the antennas pointing toward the sky, and the coax end feeding into our stations. 🙂

I’ll post more details later on, but here are some photos taken today, for the first day’s happenings.   High temp was 108 degrees outside, no clouds, by late afternoon Saturday, according to the “unofficial” thermometer at the REACT RV station.   Strong winds blew thru around 9pm Saturday night, gusting to more than 25-30 mph, blowing over at least one of the pop-up tents used (previously) for the 2 meter station.  

We’ve had nearly 100 hams tour our event so far, including the ARRL Legistative PAC representative from Austin, John Stratton, KE5ISX, who was also  representing Dr. David Woolweaver, Vice Director Gulf Division of ARRL, who just didn’t seem able to make it to each field day site in Texas like Santa Claus always seems to do on Christmas Eve.  John did bring us 10 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts for our over-night snacks and Sunday breakfast.  (Note: The donuts disappeared so fast, that my count might be off by a box or two. – Lee)

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 WIN a TransWorld TW 2010 Backpacker, Quadrastand and carry bag  for you club or group!

Call in”LIVE” from your Field Day location and get your group on  International Shortwave Radio!  Ted Randall, WB8PUM, will again be doing his international, live radio show on Field Day. Last year many sites around the world were not only monitoring his program on shortwave, but also calling in to talk about their location, activities, contacts, successes ­ and even their secret recipes for “Radio-active Chile.”

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Make sure that you bring a current copy of your amateur radio operators license with you when you attend field day. Make sure that whatever license call you operate under has a copy of their’s as well. (Club license, etc)   Every control op needs to always have a copy of their license on hand! It’s FCC rules!

73 es gud luck  W2IK

Stations active during ARRL Field Day — June 27-28 — are eligible to receive 100 bonus points for copying the special Field Day bulletin transmitted by W1AW (or K6KPH on the West Coast) according to the schedule below. You must include an accurate copy of the message in your Field Day submission. The Field Day bulletin must be copied via Amateur Radio; it will not be included in Internet bulletins sent out from Headquarters and will not be posted to Internet BBS sites.

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Some of you might have missed the posting I made as part of the Plano HamCom report (part 2 of 2) that covered a new invention, the XBee-Pro ZB ZigBee, that allows you to use your computer to remotely reprogram your ham radio in your car, without either removing the radio from your car, or taking your computer out of your house to the car.

A pair of these 500mw transmitters, combined with the appropriate data cable to connect to your specific radio, allows you to run the standard software on your computer, thru a virtual serial port (created by the two transmitters) remotely up to 2-3 blocks away.

Many hams mount their radios securely inside their car / truck / SUV / whatever, and it’s a pain to remove the radio, bring it into the house, connect it to the desktop computer, reprogram it, and then reinstall the radio only to find out you programmed the wrong PL tone or offset, or forgot a frequency.   

One transmitter connects to your radio with the appropriate data cable, the other connects to your computer (desktop PC or laptop) via a USB cable.   The two tranmitters are covered under the 802.15 categoryin the 2.4ghz band, have 500mw of power, and during testing, were able to connect up to 3 blocks away.  Shorter distances applied when the radio was mounted in the trunk.

Cost for the unit was about $110 / pair at the Plano HamCom. Al Fields KE6LGE of San Antonio bought a pair, so perhaps we can get him to demo this product at an area club meeting some time in the future.

Dispelling Myths about Field Day 

Laughable assumptions are made every year at Field Day about which Part 97 and/or ARRL contest rules can be laid aside for the weekend. In addition valid questions come from folks who recently entered our Amateur Radio ranks. Here is a collection of a few. – HamHelpDesk.Com

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The San Antonio Radio Club has invited the 3 hams running for the vacancy caused by Ray Taylor N5NAV retiring as South Texas Section Manager for the ARRL this year, to speak at their July membership meeting.

Meet the 3 candidates who are running for ARRL South Texas Section Manager. One of these three hams will be the successor to Ray Taylor N5NAV:

• Gary S. Tangrady, K5GST
• Lee Cooper, W5LHC
• Lou Everett, Sr., WA5LOU

Candidates will be asked / allowed to make a short presentation of their plans and visions for our section.  The club meeting is open to the any ham radio operator interested in hearing what these three have to say, or in finding out more about the San Antonio Radio Club.  Visitors are always welcomed.

W2IK writes: I have listed a few tips which may make your field day setups more successful and more enjoyable.

1. When setting up antennas within close proximity: If you are using wire antennas such as dipoles, and they run parallel to each other there will be interference on your HF operating bands in the form of hash so arrange them at right angles to each other and at slightly different heights. If you use wire antennas such as dipoles, try to stay away from trap dipoles and use full length antennas instead.  You may also wish to run your dipoles in different configurations such as have one as an “inverted V” and another as a sloper, etc. An antenna cut to the exact band you are using will decrease interference to and from other bands. Do not use compromise or “all band” antennas. On HF, stay away from vertical antennas as they receive too much man-made noise from sources such as generators, etc.

2. When operating within a tight area, as required by FD rules, it also pays to use “band pass filters” such as those manufactured by ICE. I have a full set of these HF filters and they work great. They are only about $ 38 per band and drastically reduce interference from your other operating posts. If your pocketbook can’t afford them, use coax “stub” filters. The lengths of these and how to build them can be found at: http://www.k1ttt.net/technote/k2trstub.html They are simple to make and easy to use. Both systems have been used by the major DXpeditions all over the world with great success. On HF frequencies make sure each operating station is properly grounded. Do NOT use a common ground for all your operating posts.

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Field day is just around the corner, so to speak, and if you aren’t already lined up to participate, what are you waiting for?   This year we are holding a combined Field Day in San Antonio at the San Antonio Fire Fighters’ Training Academy on Callahan Road, near Hwy 151 (west of downtown SA, north of Hwy 90, inside Loop 410)

An invitation was made to all ham clubs / groupsin the San Antonio metro area, asking them if they wanted to participate. 

In order to be a “named sponsor / participant”,  your club / group must commit to sponsoring / staffing a station on the air for the full 24 hour period of the event.  If you can’t handle that level of commitment, you can still participate, but won’t be named in the press releases, etc.,  as one of the sponsoring clubs. 

And if you just want to come out to “play” with us, you don’t need to be a member of any of the sponoring clubs.

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