San Antonio Hams

ATASCOSA COUNTY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
Would you like to get YOUR Amateur Radio License?

Have you thought about the hobby of “Ham” Radio, but weren’t sure where to start? Perhaps you think that it’s just too hard to learn, or that the test is expensive, or that you have to know that dit-dah stuff; y’know, Morse Code. Well, here’s where we can help!

Atascosa County Amateur Radio Club wants to help bring more people into the “Ham” Radio community. We are gearing up to offer classes for the Technician Class License, the first license that a person earns to become an Amateur Radio Operator.

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Members of the San Antonio Radio Club W5SC and Alamo Area Radio Organization AA5RO put on their annual JOTA event out in Castle Hills, at the McGimsey Scout Park, located off NW Military near Lockhill Selma Road.   This is an annual event held the 3rd Saturday of each October.  

Another local JOTA event was held up at Canyon Lake, but we don’t (yet) have any photos or details to share.

Andrew KD5NNN attended the event, and was kind enough to share these photos with us…

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Just received three dozen photos taken during the 2009 BikeMS Valero Alamo Ride to the River event on October 3rd, from Joe KA1MZY, the guy who helped provide us with some of the video footage that we incorporated into the long feature length video (33 minutes).   His YouTube.com ID is “Texas700” and I encourage you to check out his videos…

Here are his photos, mostly from BP#2, BP#4 and Lunch BP…

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October 17th was the date of the 15th anniversary celebration at the Great Northwest Branch Library, one of many branches that is part of the San Antonio Public Library system.  This library is located off of Grissom Road, near Culebra & Tezel Rd.  

Because this branch is the site of VE Test Sessions every other month by Pat AD5BR, representing the SARC VE Team, the head librarian asked Lee N5NTG to put on a demonstration Ham Radio Station as part of their celebration.  SARC was already committed to being at JOTA over at McGimsey Scout Park in Castle Hills, so Hill Country REACT agreed to sponsor the station at this event.

Below are two videos that I made up from the raw footage and photos taken during the event. 

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From ARRL listing of Special Events Station Operations:   

I’ve finally completed the promised full length video that covers both days of the 2009 Valero Alamo Ride to the River, from start to finish.  

This video includes footage from 1 other ham, Joe KA1MZY, used to fill in some gaps where I was unable to be in two places at one time.  It contains “live, unedited” audio tracks from the ham radio featuring traffic between SAG vans and with Net Control.

I also knew that I had “skipped” taking photos at BP #1 and BP #3 for some reason.   So I found some photos from the LaVernia United Methodist Church’s website for BP #3 (they were the host location for the BP) and have included a few of them in the video.

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On Saturday, October 10th, I made the not so short trip west on Hwy 90 to the town of DeHanis, Texas, looking for a bunch of crazy guys called ham radio operators who decided to hold a combination “field day” and “picnic” in the middle of the highway.   

Medina County Amateur Radio Club has a small (when compared to some SA clubs) but very active core group of ham radio operators, supporting 2 repeaters about 30-40 miles west of San Antonio.  One repeater is in Castroville, the other a few more miles west near Hondo.   They provide emergency communications support to their communities, plus public service communications for events like bike-a-thons, etc.

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One View of the 2009 BikeMS: Ride to the River

By Milton Johnson – N5HMJ

The structure of the BikeMS Amateur Radio volunteers has changed over the last two years, without really changing.  What does that mean?  

In 2008, the final year of the Bike to the Beach, we had 81 Amateur Radio Volunteers not counting the Motor Marshalls who have their own organizational structure.  This year we had 64 volunteers.  Any school of management will tell you that a group that big is too large to effectively manage. 

Fortunately, the group has informally functioned around teams, and beginning last year we formalized the teams with team leaders which this year broke down as follows:

• Breakpoint Team: Bob Rodriguez-K5AUW;
• Net Control Team: Shane O’Neal-NS5D;
• Safety Team: Curtis Rabenaldt-N5QPN;
• Medical Team: Neil Martin-WA5FSR;
• Officials & Logistics Team: Alfred Horn-KG5QW;
• SAG Team: Gordon Dial-K5SUZ and Milton Johnson-N5HMJ. 

Coordinating and organizing these teams was the task of KG5QW, K5SUZ and N5HMJ. 

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I did a quick search on YouTube.com for MS150 and 2009 Valero Ride to the River, 2009 BikeMS, etc. and found lots of videos shot during our event by hams and participants. Below are a collection of some of the better ones I found.

Search for videos by Texas700, 33Chuey, and MrRamosDesigns. These three seemed to have lots of videos from our event. 🙂

Enjoy!

This video (4:52) was shot by Texas700 from BP #3 on Day 1

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More videos follow….

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Some of the crazier hams like to be Motorcycle Marshals on the BikeMS events, and Don W5DK, found a way to mount a camera on his helmet while he rode his Honda Goldwing during the event.  This 5 1/2 minute bit of footage was taken during the storm toward the end of the course on Saturday.   You can see the rain coming down hitting him and the camera, and see the lightening strikes zapping the camera.   The first minute or so has no sound, but the rest of it has the sound of the rain and motorcycle noise.

Thanks Don and the rest of the M&M’s for being out there with us making the event safer for all the participants!

Here is Don’s original version…

…and here is the version I “fixed up” for him afterward…