San Antonio Hams

I spent about 8 hours at the AARO Field Day at Raymond Russell Park, where they almost ended up with a Marachi Band for entertainment (band went to the wrong pavilion), then moved on to visit the KARS Ham Club in Boerne before swinging back down south around midnight to the SARC Ham Club in Shavano Park.

By the time I left SARC, still running on those 5 hour energy drinks, I started to head south to ROOST, knowing they would be still running full steam ahead even in the middle of the night, but sanity prevailed, and I advised my “extra” wife that I’d be heading home soon instead of visiting more FD sites this weekend.

I used my cell phone to make some videos and take some pics, but the phone battery died & had to be recharged after I left AARO, so no middle of the night pics from KARS or SARC to be shared.  I’ve been promised pics from other hams who were at those locations, however.

AARO did a 1 day only FD event, starting setup around 10am when the park opened (county park hours restricted how long they could stay there), and shutting down & leaving before midnight when the county park turned into a pumpkin one more.  They were running 6 stations in different modes (voice / digital / cw / satellite) on various bands, and had more antennas and generators than I’ve seen in a long time.

Most of the actual radio operators were taking it very seriously, but the bulk of the 50+ hams were just there for the workshops, free food & fellowship.  A few were experimenting with different antennas, mostly home brew, and learning new modes.  There were a handful of brand new hams show up, and AARO took extra time to show them the operations and get them talking on the air to make a contact or two.

Workshops also were conducted on various topics:

• Proper Soldering Techniques
• Building DiPole Antennas
• Quadrafillic (sp?) Antennas
• Anderson Power Pole

Click the link below to continue this article & see some of the pics I took.

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Kendall Amateur Radio Society (KB5TX) always holds a field day, usually at the Kendall County Fairgrounds in recent years, but due to something that happened last year, we’ve heard a rumor they have relocated their FD location.  We’ve sent email to their officers asking for clarification, but don’t have that news yet.

If interested in going to Boerne for KARS’ Field Day, we recommend trying to contact them on their primary 2 meter repeater, 146.64  (-, 88.5 tone) and calling for them.  There is no information up on their new website about this event.

On Thursday, December 3rd, 2009, Pat & I went north to Boerne to attend the KARS Christmas Dinner at the Boerne Vistro on Main Street. Food was wonderful, and if anybody left there hungry, well… All I can say is that it was their own fault! They had a wonderful buffet with several selections, and most of us chose that option. A few ordered from the menu, and a few of us even risked ordering from the dessert menu afterward.

Here are my photos from that night…

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Yes, I know that this event was over a week ago, but I just uploaded the finished video clip from this event to Youtube.com.

About 250 athletes participated in this year’s event, despite the constant light rain. At least it wasn’t a thunderstorm, which would have caused cancelation. As it was, the event organizers did chop off 2 miles from the bicycle route, because that was one mile going up a very steep hill, and the riders would have then been traveling at high speed down a very slick paved street on the way back.  Despite what the logo above says, the planned bike route was only 12 miles, chopped to 10 miles due to weather considerations for safety.

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Don’t know much about what happened out in Kendall County (Boerne) at this year’s Field Day event, but judging from the photos that Jim Mastrogiovani KK5RZ posted, it looks like they had fun doing it…  (That’s Jim with the cigar in the photo to the right.)

This location typically has lots of shade, with a huge metal roof overhead, but not sure how cool it was underneath.

Anyway, here are some of the photos from the KB5TX Kendall Amateur Radio Society Field Day event. 

Enjoy….

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