San Antonio Hams

Note: I normally only post Texas related articles here, but this group of hams got such great PR coverage in their paper that I had to post it here, with a link back to the original article of course.  I didn’t write this article, it is property of  THE SEATTLE TIMES Newspaper, the reporter (Kyung Song) and the photographer (Alan Berner) named in the article. – Lee N5NTG

Puget Sound ham-radio enthusiasts test their hobby’s emergency powers

In a world in which you can make a mobile call from Mount Everest and log onto the Internet from a polar-ice floe, you might expect ham radios to have long been consigned to the technological dustbin. But amateur radio endures, nourished by enthusiasts and sustained by its ability to transmit critical information even after the power supply goes out, cellphone towers get jammed and television and radio fall silent.

By Kyung M. Song
Seattle Times staff reporter

In a world where you can make a mobile call from Mount Everest and log on to the Internet from a polar-ice floe, you might expect ham radios to have long been consigned to the technological dustbin.

But amateur radio endures, nourished by enthusiasts and sustained by its ability to transmit critical information even after the power supply goes out, cellphone towers get jammed and television and radio fall silent.

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Shane NS5D has announced that the Debriefing (Wrap-up) meeting for this year’s Field Day effort will be on the agenda during the Tuesday, July 7th, meeting of the Bexar County ARES group at the San Antonio EOC (located inside Brooks City Base on the SE side of San Antonio). Meeting starts at 6:45pm.   ARES meetings are typically open to any interested ham radio operator to attend.

However having said all that, I would suggest that if you were interested in attending, and you aren’t one of the regular attendees, that you please contact Shane for more details since admission into this area is generally subject to slightly higher security than when ARES meets at the Red Cross, plus it tends to be a bit confusing for the first time visitor. 

Please be thinking about your Field Day experiences and be prepared to stand up and talk about them at our next ARES meeting on Tuesday, July 7th at 6:45pm at the EOC

Especially focus on what you will do differently next time, whether it be Field Day or a deployment to the field. Folks that participated in other Field Day events besides Bexar County’s are also invited to share their lessons learned.

Regards,
Shane NS5D

This batch of 27 photos was provided by Al Fields KE6LGE…   

Al was the owner of the RV used by REACT for their station during this Field Day event.  Thanks Al!

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.

Enjoy…

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Andrew Watson, KD5NNN, was kind enough to send us some more photos which he took while wandering around the San Antonio combined Field Day Site on Saturday, June 27th. 

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.

Temperatures broke the 100 degree barrier once more before we shut down operations and departed shortly after 1pm.  In fact, one of our unofficial thermometers over in the shaded grassy area (yes, we had one, but just one such area) where the welcome station was located, reported 104 degrees at 10:30am, and 110 degrees at 1pm when we shut down.   Official temps according to the weather service only hit 101 degrees as of 5pm. Of course, we were within 1/2 mile of all that pavement over at Port San Antonio’s Airport (formerly known as Kelly AFB or Kelly USA).

Enjoy the photos, click the link for “more” to see them !

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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.