San Antonio Hams

Once again, the regional American Diabetes Association’s Tour de Cure event is upon us!  May 22-23rd are the Dates.  This is a 2-day event starting at the Retama Park in Selma (Just north of San Antonio, Off IH-35 & 1604).    Day 1 ends in San Marcos at the Texas State University, Butler Dorm.   Day 2 starts at the same place as Day 1 Finish, and ends at Akins High School in south Austin.

HELP IS STILL NEEDED!  

SAG DRIVERS & REST STOP HAMS (Day 1 only)

We’ve got a few vacancies left for driving either a Toyota Truck (from Austin Champion Toyota) or a 15 Passenger Van (from Enterprise in San Antonio near the airport).   Call Lee at 210-771-7075 ASAP If you want to volunteer cause time is running out.  1 Toyota Truck is available as of Sunday  night, and 2 of the 15 Passenger Vans are available as of Sunday night.   We could also put a few more folks into Documation SCION sag cars, but that is being controlled by another person and the # of vacancies is unknown as of Sunday night.

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June VHF QSO Party
 for details. In July of last year, we traveled to several counties during the CQ VHF Contest stopping to operate from 4 grid squares south and east of Bexar County. see: San Antonio Hams » Blog Archive » CQ VHF Contest 2009 W5BOG – Diary   If anyone is interested in joining me for this event, or would like to operate their own station during this contest along with me, feel free to email me at: alonestaryank@aol.com

On Wednesday, April 14, 2010, AARO’s own Luke Ham (KF5CSK) achieved the Boy Scouts of America highest rank, Eagle Scout. 

Shown with Luke are his proud parents, David (KF5BGT and also an Eagle Scout) and Lisa Ham.   Click on photo for larger view.

During the March 12-13th 2010 REACT International Annual Board Meeting, we tried something new and radical. 

Take a cheap webcam with built in microphone, extend the cables another 15′ so you can stick the camera off in the corner someplace, and now you have the next best thing to being that spider on the wall, not only listening in to the meeting, but watching it live as well.    

I used my CLEAR Wimax modem for part of the meeting, but changed over to the Drury Inn’s wi-fi because they had a slightly faster upload speed.  The 2 day annual board meeting was held in Irving Texas (DFW Airport area) at the Drury Inn.

Watch the meeting (recorded) at http://ustream.tv/reactsecretary for all 16 hours if you need help sleeping. 🙂 

These videos were recorded live, and have not been edited.

Medina County Rest Area, Hwy 90 west of DeHanis

April 10, 2010 – Noon until all the antennas and equipment are stowed.

Come to the Medina County Rest Stop; U.S. Hwy 90, approximately 40 miles west of the Loop 410 and Hwy 90 intersection; approximately 7 miles west of D’Hanis.

Here is their PDF flier for the event.  2010 Spring Field-Nic

Contact Walter  Hock KK5LO for details kk5lo@swbell.net

The Bexar Operators Group (W5BOG) has unveiled it’s location for the 2010 ARRL Field Day event held on the last full weekend in June.

We will be operating from Choke Canyon State Park in the “Calliham Unit” based in a shelter (cabin). In keeping with the original philosophy of what Field Day should be, we will be testing several new antenna designs and operating our rigs using deep cycle batteries charged by several banks of solar panels. If there is enough wind, we will erect our wind turbine to generate power.

Our operating class will be either 1B Batt. or 1A Batt. Nothing will be pre-planned as this is a test of our emergency communications deployment capabilities. The last time we were at this location for a “Field Day” event was in 2007 when we made several hundred contacts using just a basic “Inverted V” antenna. (2009 – Lost Maples State Park, 2008 – Mustang Island) 

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March 6th 2010

The Hill Country REACT Radio Team assisted with the Heart of the Hills Endurance Ride held at the 5400 acre Hill Country State Natural Area located outside of Bandera, Texas.  Team Members Gary Tangrady – K5GST, Al Fields – KE6LGE, Wade Martyn – WB5C and Team Leader Louis Upton – K1STX provided communications for the 25 and 50 mile events. 75 participants total were tracked at 4 checkpoints through the multiple loop course utilizing 2m simplex and the WD5FWP repeater located in Pipe Creek.

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Below are a series of pictures from the Bexar Operators Group 160 meter CQ WW SSB contest. 

We traveled to the Calliham Unit of Choke Canyon State Park, about 15 miles west of the town of Three Rivers, which is about 80 miles south of San Antonio.

After checking in, we went to our screened shelter (cabin) only to find that they all had been completely refurbished since our last visit. All the cabins had large air conditioners and two beds! No more blowing up our queen sized air mattress or lugging our window AC unit in the summer.

As you can see, they allow pets, and our two dogs quickly staked out a bed they wanted. I began the task of setting up the radio gear while my XYL, KD5YTN, Krissy, completed her chores of getting the rest of the camping gear out of the truck and assembled.  

We had a problem and had a tough choice to make. It was a very windy day on Friday, with gusts over 25 mph. We decided to wait and see if the wind would die down, as was predicted for Saturday. So, we erected a 160 meter dipole antenna to work the first half of the contest. I would have preferred a loop, but we had neither the real estate nor the time to plot one out and set it up.
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The Bexar Operators Group will be “Flying Pink” with a 9 foot pink weather balloon with an attached pink (ok, reddish pink) 260 foot vertical wire antenna during the 160 meter contest this weekend to show our support for breast cancer awareness.

We had a choice of balloons to purchase and chose the pink colored ones (boy, do they look small un inflated) and even chose the pink topped helium tank when offered a choice of others.

Pictures of our contest operation at Choke Canyon State Park’s “Calliham Unit” will be posted next week.

If you can hear us on 160 meters (probably around 1.85 – 1.9 mhz after sunset until dawn), please either post us on “DX Summit” or other internet resources or make a QSO with us!

A large, stamped -self addressed envelope, sent to the QRZ address of W5BOG will net stations contacting us a special QSL certificate showing our support for breast cancer awareness.

Bob W2IK – W5BOG

The only good way is to use a full size antenna. It’s simple physics. I don’t care what mis-information you might have read or been told or what “miracle” antenna companies might claim.