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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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).

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.

Jean and Ed Larose KS5V

I received a text from Jean. Ed passed away this morning sometime around 3:00 a.m. She said “his pain is gone”.

Ed had been recently diagnosed at the VA Hospital with a very rare form of Stage 4 Cancer in his Bile Ducts (Gallbladder). Initially the doctors had given an estimate of 1-2 years, dropped this month to perhaps 6 months, all with proper medical treatment to extend to that date. Ed went on record to decline such treatment, saying he didn’t want to undertake expensive treatment just to prolong the pain another month of two.

Please keep the Larose family in your prayers as they say goodbye to a Husband, Father and Grandfather. Ed didn’t want a funeral service. I will keep you posted on how you may want to pay your respects.

Andrew Watson, K5NNN

This from Jim, WB8AZP, via the ARROW mailing list:

FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT TELL THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOLS HOAX, I”M PUTTING THIS SPOILER UP FRONT!  Duh!

Buried in the middle of the 1200-page Health Care Reform package is something that should be disturbing to all US amateur radio operators. Embedded in the funding guidelines section 415, paragraph 27, line 45, are details on one of the mechanisms that the government intends to employ to help pay for the staggering costs of the new plan.

To put it simply, the new health care guidelines support the notion of creative funding from untapped resources, and from other government agencies, like the FCC.

This puts the burden on funding on other agencies, and therefore the health care reform pundits can claim that “they” didn’t introduce any new taxes to pay for everything.

Lurking in the depths of the new health carecare package is a time bomb waiting to affect all US Amateur Radio Operators; The new Talk And Pay (TAP) Tax.

What does the TAP Tax do? Well, just as it implies, it adds a tax on to each amateur license, based on usage of the bands.

The FCC knew it was going to be troublesome to enforce this kind of regulation, so they came up with a clever scheme – taxation by license class. All Technician, General, and Extra Class Licensees will be taxed at a different rate. Any holdover licenses from different classes will be taxed at the next higher rate, so novice license holders will be taxed as technicians, advanced holders as extra class licensees and so on.

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AB5UE called & asked me to send this out.

The Southwest Lynx Repeater System will be down for a couple of weeks for maintenance.

I don’t have any other details.

Thanks & 73s –

Mark, KE5GL
Kendall Amateur Radio Society