San Antonio Hams

In the beginning there was a plan, and the plan was deemed good!   Then Mother Nature decided to change the plans, and that’s where the flexibility and training of the BikeMS ham radio operators came into play.

My original assignment was to be SAG7 and supervise 3 other SAG vans (SAG #2, #14 & #25) for special duty between the Day 1 Start Line at the Alamo Dome and the entrance to Ft. Sam Houston base.   When that was done, we were to pop up to Sattler, TX and get staged  for the River Road segment of the route.

I was not originally supposed to be the “Turtle” bringing up the rear, but due to last minute changes on the route, the ham (Lyle KB5BSU) who was supposed be “Turtle” after marking the course with signs, got busy relocating signs to mark the new route and never made it back to the Alamo Dome in time for the start.  Then the Safety Officer declared River Road to be unsafe due to flooding in the area, and closed that segment of the route completely, shutting down BP6, 7 and 8 in the process.  (BP6 and 8 were actually the same BP, but rider were to pass thru twice.)

So that is how SAG 7 became the defacto “Turtle” to bring up the rear of the bike riders.  We had quite a few riders ride past the Alamo itself, only to decide they really didn’t want to ride in the rain all that much.  So they poised for photos of themselves in front of the Alamo, called their friends to come pick them up, and the Turtle moved on, looking for more riders needing help.    SAG #14 found a rider under the bridge at Broadway and IH-35 needing a flat changed, and SAG #25 picked up a couple of riders asking to be taking direct to BP1 for bike repairs.  SAG #2 decided to turn left into the base, instead of right to go around the base, but fortunately for him, the guard decided to let him and his wife drive their SAG van thru the base instead of shooting them instead. 🙂   

We detoured around the base and made our way to the other exit on Walters Street, where we found about 4 other SAG vans waiting for customers.  Nobody needed picked up while on the base itself, but we did pick up a couple of riders and help them get up to BP1 a tad faster than otherwise in the pouring down rain.

At BP1 we learned about the closure of River Road, the Century Route, and thus were able to relay that information to the bike repair guy who was packing up and heading toward BP 6/8.  Unfortunately, the medical team left for BP 6/8 before we could alert them to stand down, so we hope they figured it out via cell phone contact.

We continued on down the route to each BP, taking photos and video along the way.  The ride was fairly uneventful up thru BP5, then all hell broke loose with the weather.   Louis K1STX reported that his house in Seguin had received 1.5 inches of rain in 15 minutes.  Bob K5AUW at the Finish Line in New Braunfels (Schlitterbahn) reported multiple ground to air lightening strikes and heavy rain causing street flooding on the route thru New Braunfels.   SAG5 Milton N5HMJ suggested that SAFETY 1 Curtis N5QPN might want to close the course early, and the SAGs started “strongly encouraging” the ~350+ riders still on the course, to hop a SAG and get out of danger.  This was around 3pm on Saturday.

Every SAG headed back out on the course to find riders, and then a report came in that 2 Police Riders were back at Lunch stranded.  We don’t know how they ended up there hours after Lunch had closed down, but we sent a SAG to pick them up.  Randy (no call) who was driving a box truck from Austin, was pressed into service when we found a couple dozen riders huddled under the freeway at FM306 and IH-35.  We loaded riders into SAGs and bikes into his box truck and took them all over to Schlitterbahn Finish Line.   We continued to sweep the route, looking for riders huddled under nearby awnings at gas stations, car washes or buildings along the route.  At this point, we seldom got any argument from the riders when we stopped to give them a ride to Finish.

Once all the riders were safe and sound at Schlitterbahn Water Park, all SAGs were dismissed for the day, returning to their hotel or back home for the night.   SAG #7 returned home to SA for a well deserved night’s sleep, but was back on the road before 5am heading to New Braunfels in the pouring down rain.   

When the word came down as expected, that Day 2 was canceled but all SAGs were needed to assist in transporting riders back to SA, about 3 dozen hams gathered at Denny’s (IH-35 &  Hwy 46) for breakfast and fellowship.   We found a couple groups of riders stranded there also, so we picked them up and gave them rides in one of the SAG vans back to Schlitterbahn.    

The SAGs all went to refuel and then lined up outside Schlitterbahn on Lincoln Street, waiting patiently for riders and going inside to scrounge more refreshments and look at the rising flood waters in the river behind the theme park.  Most of the riders ended up being sent back to SA on school busses, with box trucks used for their bikes, and thus all but 3 SAGs were released from duty around 9:30am.  See Milton N5HMJ’s report filed earlier in this blog.

APRS Tracking Map for SAG7 N5NTG-9

This year, taking advantage of the route being closer to areas where we had better APRS coverage, more hams ran APRS trackers in their SAG vans or other units, so that Net Control could see on the computer screen where each of us were. 

See the screen shot to the right, showing the travels of N5NTG-9 (aka SAG7) for Saturday and Sunday.   The trip home and back on Saturday night and Sunday morning added some extra blue lines to the map.  Red dots indicate where a beacon report was received from my APRS radio, and the blue lines was how the system tracked the path.  Unfortunately, if the APRS beacons weren’t received and sent to the Internet, or they were too far apart, the blue path line tends to jump cross country causing some interesting detours to show on the map.  Net Control could watch live, any unit it was monitoring, to see where they were or how fast they were driving at the time of their most recent beacon report.

Below are my photos taken from the vantage point of SAG7, aka “Turtle”, with comments or descriptions added.   We’ll be posting some video footage later in a separate blog posting.  I tried to identify which day or break point the photos were taken at.