San Antonio Hams

Over 70+ Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts attended the JOTA event held this past weekend out at the Canyon Lake Dam.  Members of GVARC and other hams came out to support this event which turned into a mini-field day event.Scouts got to try three modes of communications, Voice, PSK31 and CW.  Only 20 meters was really working well, the other bands seemed unresponsive, at least thru the morning hours.

W2IK was there with his boxes of antenna goodies, and he challenged one group of scouts to build something “MacGyver Style”.   He got lots of blank looks from kids who had never heard of MacGyver, until one scout popped up and asked “wasn’t that the guy who plays the part of the guy in charge of the teams on Stargate SG1?”Despite the generation gap, Bob was able to explain that in this large Popcorn canister, were parts. Lots and lots of parts, with some junk tossed in for good measure. 

The challenge was to build a working dipole antenna out of these parts.And the challenge was met after a couple of hours, and the first contact was from Oklahoma.

I’m expecting a full report from W2IK with photos since he was there the entire time, and I was only there about an hour around lunch time, since I had been working the Triathlon instead that morning.  I’ll correct any errors / discrepancies in this report at that time.

Answer… 2 Triathlons with overlapping courses at the same time!

8 of Hill Country REACT‘s members worked the Texas Triathlon, state finals, on the north shore of Canyon Lake last Saturday morning (10/18). They used the SARO 147.14 repeater with no problems reported. Only one medical problem was called in, a slight case of “road rash” by one rider.  Otherwise the medical team was rather bored, all in all.

Further east down the lake shore, about a mile from our starting point, at an area frequently used by the Army or Air Force for their recreation purposes, a 2nd Triathlon called the Randolph AFB Rambler 120 was started.  Fortunately their riders only overlapped our course by a few miles, and their riders were moving in the opposite directions, but we still had to coordinate with the deputy sheriffs handling traffic control so they knew which riders where which group.

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Hill Country REACT members voted on Monday, October 20th, to change their monthly meeting date to the THIRD WEDNESDAY of the month, and to keep on holding the meetings up north of San Antonio, at the Bulverde VFD on FM 1863 & Cougar Bend.

Previously, they had been meeting on the 3rd Monday of the month, but alternating with Teleconference meetings or northside San Antonio Restaurant meetings.  Members felt that a in-person meeting still had value despite the fuel and time costs to drive so far.  With members driving in from Seguin, Canyon Lake and San Antonio, and other member coming from New Braunfels or Boerne, it was felt that the Bulverde VFD was still the most centrally located meeting place to use.

More info found at their club web site, www.HillCountryREACT.org