The Annual Universal City Veteran’s Day Parade will be held this year on November 6th, actually the weekend before the San Antonio Rock N’ Roll Marathon.
We are still in need of more volunteers so if you are available and would like to help please contact me Gary S. Tangrady, K5GST, either at K5GST01@gmail.com or phone me at 210-619-6217. This is my cell phone number and I use it for work, so if I do not answer your call right away feel free to text me or leave me a message.
The parade route is from the staging area on Universal City Boulevard where it will turn left onto Pat Booker and head towards Randolph AFB. It will turn right at Byrd Boulevard just before the main gate into Randolph and from there take the first left and travel to the end of that street and break up at the VFW Post.
Between the hours of 0800 and 0900 people will start showing up at the Universal City Police Department on Universal City Boulevard. (note: when you come to the front of the building there are two doors, take the door that says Police Station and tell the dispatcher you are there for the parade. He will direct you to the training room where the briefing will be held.) Coffee and donuts will be provided by the police department and I plan on being there at 0800. I need one other person to show up with me at 0800 to run the talk-in on the 147.000 New Braunfels repeater, negative offset with a PL of 88.5.
At 0900 Steve Denton of the UC Police Department and I will conduct a short briefing to make sure all spots are covered and answer any last minute questions. From there we will disperse to our assigned locations and at 0930 the Net Control station will conduct a roll call to make sure all stations are on the air and set up. He will be running the roll call on the Universal City repeater owned by Dave/KE5HBB on a frequency of 441.900 with the normal 70cm offset of plus 5 MhZ and a PL of 103.5. Also be prepared to switch to a simplex frequency of 147.52 in the event of repeater failure.
The parade is scheduled to kick off at 1030 and at an appropriate time before the parade starts Steve Denton will put out the word to place the barricades out. When you get to your location you will see either barricades, traffic cones and possibly police tape you can use to block off one lane of the side street you are assigned to. At this point local traffic may no longer turn north onto Pat Booker which would be turning into the direction the parade is coming from. A few minutes later Steve will call for all traffic on Pat Booker to cease. We will have help in this venture as Steve and I plus his other officers will be patrolling the road clearing the way for the parade. The need for our communications comes into play at this point in the event someone runs a barricade. You will also be talking to the drivers telling them an alternative path to their destination. We will brief you on the alternate routes for traffic at the briefing.
Most of the traffic is from local people and they are knowledgable of the parade and used to this event happening every year and are pretty much cooperative. There is usually no problems in this area but now and then someone gets antsy and runs a barricade. At that point all we can do is radio it in to our Police Liason who will be Charlie Land/KC5NKK and one of the patrol cars on the course will take care of it. Once the parade gets in full swing things will calm down and about all we have left to do is to sit back and enjoy the parade.
So bring your chairs, your other half, the kids, your snacks and drinks if you want and enjoy a really neat community parade. Don’t forget the sunscreen & wear a hat! If you have a club t-shirt or uniform shirt, wear it with pride!
So far we have the following volunteers: (in no certain order)
Charlie Land/KC5NKK
Bob Riley/KF5HVN
Lew Archer/W0YVY
Lee Wingert/KF5FMK
Dale Robinson/KB5YSJ
Linda Robinson/KC5QPQ
Milt Johnson/N5HMJ
Louis Upton/K5STX
Dave Espinoza/WQ5S
Lee Besing/N5NTG
David Besing/KD5MTJ
Wade Bolling/W5ERX
Garnet Robinson/KE4WRI
Janet Rivers/KE5ZUC
Travis Cole/KF5DEE
Gloria Rupert/KE5CVA
Frank Rholm/KE5IFX
John Lasher/N4NKN
Ray McLeaird/N5RAM and 11 other Motorcycle Marshalls.
Thanx and 73’s GaryT/K5GST
