San Antonio Hams

This was the 39th annual Veterans Day parade in Universal City, Texas.    Hill Country REACT organized the hams to support this event, as they have for the past 20+ years.   But without the support of all the non-REACT member hams, this event would not have run as smoothly as it did.

Ham Operator volunteers manned barricades along the parade route, and at 10:15am, the call came over the radio to “put up your barricades, no traffic goes north on the parade route!”    About 5 minutes later, the call went out “stop all traffic on the parade route both directions!”   

Is that a UC PD car behind me?

Two of the UC Police cars had REACT members riding in them, and we had motorcycle marshals cruising the course along with UC PD motorcycle and bicycle police officers.   There were too many side parking lot exits to block them all, so periodically the call came on the radio “watch out for that red car going north from such and such location…”  or “this driver needs to get to work…” or “this driver didn’t know we were having a parade today…”

Our “job” today was not to argue with the drivers or spectators, but simply to inform them of what the UC PD had told us, and to ensure the barricades were in place on time.  We let the UC PD pull over those who wished to press the issue further.

I’ve posted some photos below from the parade that I managed to take.  I’ll drop some descriptions and comments in as captions for the photos when I get some more time.  I’ve also taken some video, but that takes much more time to edit and prepare for publication, so it hasn’t happened yet.