San Antonio Hams

Hamfest this weekend live broadcast on the internet!

Live broadcast starts Friday Aug 14 at 0800 CDT or 1300 UTC as we drive the 200 miles to Huntsville, AL.   Just as we did on our Dayton hamvention event, we will be giving prizes to lucky viewer this year. See details on the website at http://wa5kub.com 

We will be broadcasting live video and audio of the 2009 Huntsville, AL hamfest this year via the internet.  The live broadcast begins on Friday morning, Aug 14 at 0800 CDT (1300 UTC) as we depart Memphis, TN and drive to Huntsville.  Just as we have done before, we will be broadcasting our drive live from the car. Then we will broadcast the hamfest all day Saturday Aug 15 and Sunday Aug 16.  We expect hams to be taking part in the Huntsville hamfest from all over the world. We have had viewers in over 150 countries.  

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About 20 hams gathered after hours at the KComm Ham Store to hear Lothar K5LEH demonstrate and explain Amateur Fast Scan and Slow Scan TV.   He started with a presentation on a projector screen, showed the equipment that he regularly uses to make this happen, then the group moved over to the radio side of the store to “go live” on the air and see if they could exchange photos with other hams.  Unfortunately, the bands were not cooperative with Lothar’s wishes, and so he got to explain what would have happened if someone had responded to what he was sending out on the air.

I made the short trek over to Martha’s Mexican Restaurant this evening to attend the monthly AARO ham club meeting.  I got there a bit early to eat, so that I could pay better attention to what was happening during the meeting.    About 3 dozen hams and family members were there tonight, including two brand new hams, one who had his ticket about a month, the other for only 2 weeks.

During the meeting, it was announced that the annual awards / Christmas banquet would be on Friday, December 4th, at Grady’s BBQ on Bandera Rd.  Attendance will be prepaid RSVP only, last minute guests will be referred to the normal customer menu rather than the provided buffet. This change was due to a problem last year where some folks RSVP’d but didn’t show, causing the club to have to pay for the difference.

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Late this afternoon, heavy rains decided to visit San Antonio, heavy enough that the National Weather service issued a Flood Advisory until 9pm, due to the slow moving storm that was dropping 1″ to 2″ of rain in some areas. It’s now 8:30pm and still sprinkling, but the strongest storms have moved off to the SE side of Bexar County. 

 At my house on the NW side of San Antonio, near Seaworld so to speak, we’ve had 0.97 inches of rain since the storm began around 6pm.   Guess I won’t be needing to water my lawn tonight. 🙂

Source: This is forwarded to you by the State of Texas State Operations Center (SOC).
Date: August 11, 2009
Subject: New traffic, criminal laws set to go into effect Sept. 1

HB 2730 is the DPS’s Sunset Legislation, and many of the DPS-related bills this session were included in HB 2730.

Notable traffic and criminal laws that go into effect on Sept. 1 (unless otherwise indicated) include*:

Seatbelts:

HB 537 requires all occupants of a vehicle, no matter their age, to be secured by a safety belt, no matter where they are seated in the vehicle; changes the definition of a passenger vehicle to include a passenger van designed to transport 15 or fewer passengers including the driver; removes the current exemption for third-party Medicaid transportation provisions regarding the use of child passenger safety seats; and prohibits a motorcycle operator from carrying a passenger under the age of 5 unless the child is seated in a sidecar attached to the motorcycle.

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As the drought continues down here in South Texas, I thought I’d take time to remind hams to double check their grounding systems (if they have any), because the ground is so dry and getting cracked, and you might not as well grounded now as you thought you ought to be. You might have to water around your grounding rods, or around your tower base to prevent shifting / cracking ot that. Of course if you’re having that much of a problem, you need to have soaker hoses around your house’s foundation as well.

I took these photos at a customer’s front yard this afternoon, thought it was ironic that a yard care company would leave a sign in this desolate dry yard, warning folks to not walk on the grass until it dried.

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The Bexar Operators Group (W5BOG) is in the final stages of acquiring a 1994 Chevy Van/Bus for their use as a general communications and/or emergency communications vehicle. This 18 passenger bus will be converted into a go-anywhere communications van which will also be used for casual outings and “in the field” communications experiments. This “green” bus runs on propane. It will be fitted with complete VHF and HF  operating areas, propane stove, sleeping accommodations and “bathroom”. Special antennas will be used and a portable generator and solar panels will supply energy.    It is hoped to have the vehicle “up and ready” in a few weeks.

Five members of the Hill Country REACT Team made the trek north to the 2009 Austin Summerfest, a few went up for Friday and Saturday, others just for the big day, Saturday.   Those members included myself N5NTG, Gary K5GST, Joe W4CTH, Shane NS5D, and Wade W5ERX.     I took a few photos, but to make it easier on me while writing this blog post, I’ll wait and post most of them at the bottom of this article instead of embedding them as I go along.  I also won’t try to list all the names and call signs of everyone I met, for fear of leaving out someone accidently and causing them to think I didn’t care enough to mention them.

We saw members from most of the various San Antonio Area Ham Radio Clubs, including SARO, AARO, SARC, BOG, ROOST, REACT, ARES, and GVARC.  We probably had enough Bexar County ARES members present to hold a meeting. 🙂   

We found ham friends from the Austin area, Houston area, and the great folks from the Hayes / Caldwell ARES group who like to come south and help REACT with some of our public service events on a regular basis.

I drove up along with Gary K5GST in my van on Saturday morning, checked in at registration and then toured the rather modest tailgating area outside the Austin Marriot Airport South Hotel until the main exhibit hall opened at 8am. I didn’t find much to spend my $$ on, although apparently Gary found a few essentials that needed transport back to San Antonio.
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We received the following report from Shane NS5D covering one of the more important seminars held at this year’s Austin Summerfest, the ARES meeting with a briefing about Texas’ new disaster recovery / response teams.  

Here is Shane’s report… 
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The Austin Summerfest event actually starts on Friday evening, 08/07, with outdoor tailgating in the parking lot, and lots of social interaction.    Admission is $10/person at the door on Saturday. No admission charge for the outdoor portion of the event.   Website is found at http://www.austinsummerfest.info/ .  

Talk-in will be done on the Austin 146.94 repeater, negative offset as normal. Please note that it uses a tone of 107.2, but tone is not required.

Location is on the south side of Austin, TX, in a new hotel (not same location as previous year), the Austin Marriott Airport South at 4415 South IH 35, on the northbound side of IH-35, just before you get to St. Elmo.  There are 5 hotels in a row, but this is the hotel on the north end of that grouping.  Here is a MapQuest map to the new location.

New info: Posted on 11 June 09.
The double sided, Summerfest 2009 Flyer is posted here.  Read the rest of this entry »