San Antonio Hams

The 2nd Annual American Hero 25k Relay Run will be held on Sunday, May 27th, at Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas.   Last year, hams helped with this last minute organized event, from Alamo Stadium, with the course being down into Brackenridge Park.  Due to planned construction at the stadium, and perhaps the need to avoid causing the traffic confusion into the Zoo area that morning, the routes have been changed and the start / finish will be at the Koehler Pavilion inside Brackenridge Park.

Contact Lee Besing N5NTG by email at info@sanantoniohams.org or by calling 210-771-7075 to volunteer.  Free t-shirts and food from the Spaghetti Warehouse.

This year, Hams Rule!  Yep, ALL communications go by  ham radio, other than some internal event staff communications using commercial radios at the start/finish line.   The 2012’s event is a 1-day event, starting & ending in Boerne Texas.  The routes are changed 100% from last year.

We’ll have eight (8) White 15-Passenger SAG Vans to staff with Hams, Eight (8) Rest Stops to staff with Hams, and two (2) repeaters to coordinate with.    All communications will be on 2 meters radio, using the 145.19 Boerne (KARS) repeater and the 146.98 Kerrville (Hill Country Amateur Radio Club) repeater.   Dual band radios are suggested to enable local SAG to SAG or SAG to Rest Stop communications off-net.

Contact Lee Besing at tdc@sanantoniohams.org or call him at 210-771-7075 to volunteer!  Don’t wait, assignments are going fast!   Lee will be attending the HCARC meeting on April 5th up in Kerrville to sign up their volunteers.

Actually, the exact title is “South Texas Tour de Cure”, and it’s starting / ending in Boerne, Texas, not San Antonio. But it will happen this year on Saturday, May 19th, as a one day event with 4 routes to choose from. There will be an 18 mile & 30 mile routes going south from Boerne into the Fair Oaks Ranch area, and the 60 & 104 mile routes go north from Boerne thru Sisterdale and Comfort, before the 104 goes NW to Kerrville and back around down past Camp Vista, Center Point and thru Comfort on the way back to Boerne.

We’ve suggested a new slogan for the new Tour de Cure routes…  “If you’re tired of flat, whimpy, boring rides, change over to the Tour de Cure for the hilliest ride you can ask for…” LOL   In other words… The ride is extremely hilly, with a need for extreme caution on the part of our Ham drivers and Motorcyle Marshals.   Roads are mostly narrow 2 lane paved roads with double yellow lines and no shoulders for the riders.  Speed limits are usually near 60mph on the open roads.   Cell phone coverage is very spotty in some areas!  I suspect we may be busier than last year in the SAG and communications venue.

This will NOT be a flat boring ride.

There will be some challenges caused by the hilly terrain. We’ve got APRS radios to install in all of our SAG vans, plus key supply trucks, courtesy of Austin Amateur Radio Club (Paul Fenrich KA5FZU is returning to run APRS). Mike Perez W5ZAP will be leading our valuable Motorcycle Safety Marshals and Curtis Rabenhalt N5QPN will be our route safety officer. Yup, we snagged up Curtis to volunteer this year!   I’ve driven the entire 104 mile route, and found we had solid APRS coverage on most of the course.  I was using my own 25 watt APRS unit with a full sized higher gain antenna, more power & antenna than our borrowed tracking units will have.

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We just had a conversation with Steve & Susan Shirk, the force behind the scenes of the BPMS150 BikeMS event from Houston to Austin later this month.   They still have a few empty slots to fill, mostly SAG Van Drivers & Navigators.    Our training date for Central Texas Hams will be this next Saturday, April 7th, from 10am-Noon, followed by a “free lunch”, up in San Marcos.  Contact Lee Besing by phone 210-771-7075 or email if you want to volunteer before that meeting.  After that meeting, they will be unable to accept volunteers due to the need to run DMV and background checks (on drivers only) and to reserve rooms for overnight accomodations.

Hams who are planning to work this event, are asked to attend this training / orientation event to learn about the changes in this year’s route & rest stops.  Yup, changes are in the winds, especially after the wildfires up near Bastrop.

If you prefer a more stable assignment, i.e. a fixed location or roaming “communications only” assignment, we can arrange for that as well.  We’ll put you in contact with Mike Hardwick, N5VCX, who is the head pooh-bah for ham communications.

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Saturday was one of the first organized ADA Tour de Cure Rider Rallys scheduled for the 2012 event.  The event started on the south side of San Antonio at the Texas A&M Campus on Gillette, just north of Palo Alto College with aproximately 156 riders registered.  Rally Riders had a choice of 3 routes, a 15 mile (out & back), 32 mile or 53 mile.  

APRS Tracking of SAG #2

As you can see from the screen shot to your right that shows the APRS tracking from N5NTG-9, the bottom section shows the route.  We’ve put a marker at the split for the 32/53 mile route on the image, along with a few notes.   My van was SAG #2, N5NTG-9, and we covered primarily the longer route, but did a lot of back tracking & delivery of riders who couldn’t finish.

We had 2 SAG vehicles, one driven by David Sloan, the other driven by Lee Besing N5NTG.  Riders had a choice of taking SAG #1 or SAG #2 this weekend. 🙂    SAG #2 had APRS tracking active all day (see above notes) and worked mostly the longer route, while SAG #1 worked the shorter route (and kept much busier because only about 1/3 of the riders rode the longer route).   

 We had 13 Motorcycle Safety Marshals for this event, with about half of them being hams.  We ran a short informal net (no net control per se) for the event, and never asked that the repeater we used (STARS 146.66) be closed for our exclusive use that morning.

The ride kicked off at 8:30am, and the last rider didn’t finish until nearly 1:30pm.  No accidents were reported needing medical care, although we had several riders with blown tires, or other mechanical failures that needed to be SAG’d into finish.

One of the “fun” things I got to do in SAG #2, was have Alex from KSAT 12 TV ride with me, taking photos of the various riders along the route, and some video.  He’s going to create a 30 second promo video for the Tour de Cure event to be shown on TV.

The big ride, the South Texas Tour de Cure, is on Saturday, May 19th, starting in Boerne, TX, with four (4) routes available.  The two longer routes go north of Boerne, the two shorter rides go south toward Fair Oaks Ranch.  Many more Hams are needed for this big event, to cover Break Points, drive SAG Vans, shadow event officials, etc.  Contact Lee N5NTG at info@sanantoniohams.org or call 210-771-7075 (voice / text).

Here are some photos from the March 17th Rider Rally…. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is in the air, and our calendar list of events is springing into action.  We’ll eventually get all of these posted to the actual calendar, but here is the quick and dirty listing of the next few major public service events where Hams are needed here in the Central / South Texas area.

FYI – This is our 500th article posted on San Antonio Hams!  Yay!

• March 25th – Tall Texan Triathlon (Boerne), 1 day event.  Participants swim in Boerne City Lake, ride their bikes 56 miles (route thru Waring), and run 12 miles.  Hams needed at checkpoints / rest stops on the ride and run portion of the route, no need to get your radio wet in the lake.  Gordon Dial K5SUZ coordinating. Contact him by phone (only) at 210-410-9518. No email.
• March 25^th – Capitol 10K Race & Fun Run- 35th Anniversary!  35th Anniversary – Sunday, March 25, 2012. Jeff Schmidt, N5MNW, coordinating. Contact Jeff at N5MNW@arrl.net
• April 21-22nd – BPMS150 (Houston to Austin), 2 day event, arrive Friday night before to get free hotel room for SAG Hams.  Using dual band mobile radios (preferred) because some nets are on VHF (2 meter) and others on UHF.  Lee Besing, N5NTG, & Charlie Land, KC5NKK coordinating.  Contact Lee at 210-771-7075 or email info@sanantoniohams.org, Contact Charlie at 512-796-7565 or email at kc5nkk@hillcountryreact.org.
• April 22nd – Wildflower 100 Bicycle Tour (San Antonio), 1 day event, start / end at Retama Park (IH-35 & 1604 area).  SAG Hams and Rest Stop Hams needed.  Gordon Dial K5SUZ coordinating.  Contact him by phone (only) at 210-410-9518.  No email.
• May 5th – Central Texas Tour de Cure (Austin), 1 day event. Start / Finish at Travis Expo Center. 5 routes, many rest stop hams & SAG Hams needed, plus net control.  Using the Austin 146.94 repeater most likely.  Jeff Schmidt, N5MNW, coordinating.  Contact Jeff at n5mnw@arrl.net or Lee at info@sanantoniohams.org to volunteer.
• May 19th – South Texas Tour de Cure (Boerne / San Antonio), 1 day event.  Start / Finish at Champion High School in Boerne, Texas.  5 routes, 8 rest stops, 8 SAG Hams (plus navigator), net control help, etc. Lee Besing, N5NTG, coordinating.  Contact Lee at info@sanantoniohams.org to volunteer.
• June 9-10th – Texas Water Safari, multi-day event, but San Antonio hams usually only handle Day 1, way into the night on some locations.  http://www.texaswatersafari.org for info.  Eric Olson, WB5ZJQ, coordinating.  Contact Eric by email at wb5zjq@sarepeater.net to volunteer. Packet Radio used to transmit canoe numbers to other stations down the river.   Some positions are short (closer to start line), and others are mosquito bait (late into the night).  This event can be lots of fun, sort of a mini-Field Day event, combined with a picnic. Every location is different.
• June 23-24^th – Field Day Weekend.  We’ll be posting locations for the various organized ham clubs in the upcoming weeks, and for the unorganized ones as well.

See more details below for the BPMS150 and Tour de Cure events…

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Location:

Hill Country State Natural Area – Bandera, Texas

 When: 7th and 8th of January 2012

Description:

It is that time of year, to start forming the roster and making preparations for the 10th Annual Bandera 100k Ultra-Marathon held at Hill Country State Natural Area in Bandera County.

Tejas Trails Communication Group – Sponsored by Hill Country REACT has been the lead team for communications for this event the past 6 years with the assistance of many hams from the San Antonio, Austin and other areas around the state..

This event typically requires 15 – 16 Amateur Radio Operators in a situation that is similar to what an Emergency Communications Operator would experience in a disaster zone. UHF, VHF and Packet communications are involved in this event.

This is a fun event with challenges.  The participants of this event, are of a type you will not encounter at most other events we deal with throughout the year.  Over the years, we have made some lasting friendships!

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Once again, the AARO Ham Club has been tasked with providing Hams to assist the San Antonio Rock & Roll Marathon on Sunday, November 13, 2011. 

We don’t have much time to get this organized, but we need volunteers at every mile marker, and a few other odd ball locations along the route.  We need about 2 dozen (minimum) volunteers to staff each of the assigned positions.

Duties include picking up the timing clocks prior to the event, (See #3 below for details), then being on-site at your assigned location prior to 6am, ready to turn them on when Dave Espinoza W5QS gives us the countdown over the radio.  We’ll send out exact locations for those of you who sign up to work the event.

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Hams are still needed to fill a few key spots for this year’s BikeMS (MS150) event, being held on October 15th and 16th.  The event starts in San Antonio at the AT&T Center on Saturday, ending that evening in New Braunfels.  Sunday starts in New Braunfels, and ends back at the AT&T Center.

Spots still open are “Shadows” for event officials, police cars (ride in front seat, not back), and medical response vehicles. There may still be a few openings for SAG Drivers (Background check & DMV check required), SAG Navigators, or Rest Stop hams, etc.  Shadows simply ride along & provide communications for their designated official, sort of like a SAG’s navigator but you won’t be loading bikes in the back. 🙂   Shadow positions usually start earlier & end later than other positions, due to the need to link up & install radios before heading out on the route.

If interested, contact Charlie KC5NKK via email at charlesdland@gmail.com or Lee N5NTG at info@sanantoniohams.org.   Phone contact available at 512-796-7565 (Charlie)  or 210-771-7075 (Lee).

We need hams for the Alamo Area Law Enforcement Explorer Competition (AALEEC)

Saturday, 22 October 0700 to about 1630
Southwest High School, 11960 Dragon Ln, San Antonio, TX 78252

Need about 6 to 8 hams to cover the following events at approximately three locations:

Events will be: Accident Investigation, Arrest-Search-Seizure, Bicycle Obstacle Course, Bomb Threat, Building Search, Crime Scene Search, Crisis Negotiation, Domestic Disturbance, Felony Stop, Robbery in Progress, Team Building (Obstacle Course), Traffic Stop.

Volunteers start showing up at 6am, registration starts at 7am, briefing at 8am, lunch 12-1, competition ends at 4:30, hope to have the closing ceremony at 5pm, done by 6pm.

So as not to work our ham radio operators all day, two shifts is desired, but not necessary. Shift one will be 0700 to 1130 and shift two will be 1130 to about 1630. If you want to work the event all day that would be appreciated. We begin shutting down our stations around 4:30.

Dave W5QS
210-287-5036

We’re down to the wire for this event, and still need more ham radio operators to help us.  This year, the organizers are asking hams to drive SAG Trucks (donated by local dealer) instead of riding as a passenger in someone else’s car.  We’ve got about 11 Motorcycle Safety Marshalls committed. 

We need to staff about 5-6 Rest Stops (5 rest stops, 1 water stop), plus 4 SAG vehicles, a turtle vehicle and the Start / Finish.

The event starts / ends at the La Vernia City Park, just of Hwy 87 in La Vernia, Tx.  Take Rigsby Road / Hwy 87 due east from Loop 410 and you can’t miss it.   Three routes to cover, 32, 55, 80.   Free food from EZ’s at the finish, Free beer as well.

If you want to volunteer, contact Lee Besing by email info@sanantoniohams.org or phone at 210-771-7075 (cell)