San Antonio Hams

As of 12:36 p.m. Saturday September 26, 2009, Chaparral Amateur Radio Club aka Guadalupe County ARES would like to announce the re-birth of the .76 repeater!

As many know, the .76 in Seguin has a special place in history, and is close to the hearts of many in the area. It was important to many, that this repeater pair stay with CARC and in Seguin.

Special Thanks go to Jeremy Davenport – KE5ELI, Don Kirchner – W5DK, and David Floyd – WD5IEH for their contributions in time, equipment and expertise completing the project.

Over the last several months, this group of dedicated Amateurs has been working on this project, and today, the 146.76 was brought back to life, better than ever. The overall goal, upon installation of the new antenna (still 6 weeks from delivery) and some minor tweaks, is to have a strong and reliable wide area coverage repeater, that can be enjoyed by all, and provide valuable communications links during public service and disaster events!

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This morning, a few dozen hams gathered at the American Red Cross HQ on the east side of San Antonio, TX, to get their briefing, packets and their free t-shirt, for next weekend’s BikeMS Valero Alamo Ride To The River.  Most of those who missed the briefing, will be given their materials when they pick up their SAG vans or on site at their assignment the day of the event from Milton (SAG 5) N5HMJ.

Here are a few photos taken this morning….

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News flash!

SARC VEs get to hit the snooze alarm a few more times!

In case you haven’t heard, our city leaders thought the library hours needed to be changed. As of October 1, the Great Northwest Library will be opening on Saturdays at 10 AM. Since we don’t want to start the test session in the parking lot, we’ll need to change the SARC VE session time to start at 10 AM when the library doors open. 🙂

Thanks for those of you who have been helping us, for your continued service at our test sessions. If you’d like to help at any of upcoming sessions (especially the January one), let me know!

Our next VE sessions will be:

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I put together this video after the 2009 La Vernia Wildwest Hammerfest.  Probably missed some items, but here it it.  Featuring some well known ham radio operators and hundreds of bicycle riders who came out that day just so I could try and make this video.

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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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Around 5:30am on Saturday morning, 09/19/2009, way before the chickens even thought about waking up, there were a bunch of crazy folks talking on the 147.04 repeater, all saying they were heading toward LaVernia for some bicycle event. 

The San Antonio Repeater Organization (SARO) organized the hams for this event, which was billed as the 2nd annual event, even though it was the 3rd year.  Seems that last year (2008) the event got canceled due to a pesky hurricane that was threatening to hit the gulf coast of Texas, and that hurricane was going to use up the law enforcement resources needed by the event, plus the threat of extremely bad weather might have endangered the riders.

Originally, Gordon K5SUZ was slated to coordinate hams for this event, but due to the death of Liliane KC5AQP a couple weeks prior, he asked Eric WB5ZJQ and Lee N5NTG to take over the operation.   We were a bit short handed today, after a couple of last minute cancelations and no-shows, but we all pitched in and some did double duty to cover rest stops until we could shift another ham over to that location.  We had 10 SAG vehicles, but only 6 had hams riding in them, so we used cellular phones to try and coordinate the other 4 drivers.   We had 5 rest stops and 10 Motorcycle Marshals.   

Net Control was ran by the Manley Family, with Charles KD5EXS and Charlie W5BRC were most frequently heard as NCS, with Barbara KB5RLF covering their occasional need to take breaks.

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Just a reminder….

The Texas QSO Party occurs on the last full weekend in September. The 2009 dates are the 26th and 27th of September. Operating times are from 1400Z on SATURDAY to 0200Z on SUNDAY and from 1400Z to 2000Z on SUNDAY. Operation on all bands except on 60 meters, 30 meters, 17 meters, and 12 meters is permitted. Stations may work the entire contest period. Be sure to submit your scores by October 31.

This is a great chance to work your fellow Texans and it’s fun, too!  Just read the rules at: http://www.txqp.net/  and try to work as many stations in Texas as you can. BUT WAIT! You are in Texas, too, so try to work as many states and countries as you can. Just call: “CQ Texas QSO Party”.  Each new state or country counts as a multiplier. No matter haow many or how few stations you work, turn in your score as per instructions on the home page.

Also, read http://sanantoniohams.org/blog/?p=821 so you’ll be aware of how a “little gun” can do well in a state QSO party. You might even want to operate with some fellow ham club members as a multi-op.  Above all…. HAVE FUN!

Bob  W2IK

In the spirit of, as Lee, N5NTG, put it: “….it struck me how much the “turf boundaries” between clubs has shrunk, …… I think that “shrinking” is a good thing to be happening” 

In the spirit of cooperation, the Bexar Operators Group has offered to underwrite and offer their “2010 Jump Team Boot Camp” to members of the Chaparral Amateur Radio Club (which happens to also be the Guadalupe County ARES group).

This would be the third “Jump Team Boot Camp” given by the Bexar Operators Group. It would be a two-day (not three day) deployment event at a site with no facilities north-east of Austin. This “Jump Team Boot Camp” will concentrate on amateur radio and the ways and means to get a communications jump team operational should there be a need to deploy some distance from your home and communicate in the aftermath of a disaster. This session is planned for the weekend of  March 20-21st, but we are open to other weekend dates within this Spring time frame.
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I thought that might get your attention! 🙂

BikeMS Valero 2009 Ride To The River is needing a few more reliable hams to serve as police shadows during the upcoming BikeMS event on October 3rd and 4th. You get to ride in the front (passenger) seat of a police patrol car for this 2 day event, operating your ham radio and passing instructions to/from the officer via Ham Radio Net Control.

All BikeMS volunteers must pass a background check for criminal and driving records, but you won’t want to volunteer to get in your assigned patrol car if you have outstanding warrants, or the 2 day trip might get longer. Fortunately for us, the majority of hams in our area don’t generally worrry about warrants, since they tend to keep their noses clean (legal wise at least). I don’t personally know of any hams that would be affected by this background check.

What would you need in order to volunteer?

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