San Antonio Hams

In a recent posting by W2IK, the upcoming drill on Saturday, August 29th, was discussed in rather general terms.   Since that time, we’ve increased the scope of this event somewhat.    We’ve added one ARES group (Hayes / Caldwell County) to the mix, and have room for more if other groups want to  participate.

The event will only last 3 hours of radio time (11am – 2pm Saturday), compressing several days into 3 hours.  What fun!   We’ll be using local VHF freqs for operations near SA and another freq for local CC comm, plus a 40 meters net for the group, and MARS’s HF freq for their internal operations.  We’ll be using the NWS office in New Braunfels KD5UMW and Drisocoll Childrens Hospital W5DCH as net controls.

Event:  Hurricane “Albert” is expected to make landfall just north of Corpus with maximum winds at 130 mph.

• Hour 1 – Pre-Landfall – evacuation of residents in coastal cities in path of storm. Problems with evac routes and major side routes.  Status of Shelter fill rates, etc.
• Hour 2 – Landfall – Loss of power, high winds, property damage noticed, major flooding and high surf conditions.  Problems with evac routes and major side routes.  Status of Shelter fill rates, etc.
• Hour 3 – Post-Landfall – Sending in teams to evaluate damage, return residents, status of evac routes being returned to normal use, power failures in area, comm failures in area due to towers blown or power failures, etc.  Wrap up.

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The Bexar Operators Group (W5BOG) is in the final stages of acquiring a 1994 Chevy Van/Bus for their use as a general communications and/or emergency communications vehicle. This 18 passenger bus will be converted into a go-anywhere communications van which will also be used for casual outings and “in the field” communications experiments. This “green” bus runs on propane. It will be fitted with complete VHF and HF  operating areas, propane stove, sleeping accommodations and “bathroom”. Special antennas will be used and a portable generator and solar panels will supply energy.    It is hoped to have the vehicle “up and ready” in a few weeks.

We received the following report from Shane NS5D covering one of the more important seminars held at this year’s Austin Summerfest, the ARES meeting with a briefing about Texas’ new disaster recovery / response teams.  

Here is Shane’s report… 
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Bexar County ARES holds its monthly meetings on the 1st Tuesday of the month, and rotates the location between the American Red Cross HQ (Houston St & Commerce St), and the SA City EOC down at Brooks City Base.   This month, about 18 members of the local ARES group met in the American Red Cross HQ and later toured the radio room. One member (Shane NS5D) was out supporting a brush fire that SAFD had rolled out to support with their command bus, and another member ( Ray AE5HN) responded to a Red Cross support call and had to leave the meeting early.

Focus for tonight’s meeting, led by Bexar County ARES EC David K5OLE, was the subject of Hurricane Preparedness, how much advance time to expect, how accurate of a guess re landfall center to expect, when to expect to be deployed back down on the coast for the recovery phase. The second focus was a planned antenna party for the morning of August 29th to take down and repair the dipole antennas at the Red Cross, then reinstall them on the roof.  Contact any ARES AEC for details if you want to volunteer to help.

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The Bexar Operators Group has closed the availability of our late October, three  day “Jump Team Boot Camp” session as we have reached both our limits of registered applicants and  filled a short standby list.

I did turn away a few people, such as a father and son team from the mid-west who wanted to “audit” (just watch) the event. This boot camp is only for the “doer” and all participants are expected to do everything so they can be prepared for any real emergency event.

Some slots were filled by hams from North Texas, Army MARS and hams from the mid-west. There were no hams from South Texas who wanted to attend. I may have to make some minor adjustments to the timing of the event in order to accommodate people coming in from out of state and so the personnel teaching survival skills can be available. 

I probably will have a few of the special 200+ page session guides available after the event, replete with any additions made during the event, for sale to others.

Bob  W2IK – NNN0KSI – NNN0GBY2  STX NAVMC MARS Ecom

Most of you missed tonight’s ARES meeting that was held in a conference room inside the secure City’s EOC building over in Brooks City Base on the SE side of San Antonio. 

About 2 dozen hams attended to do a debriefing regarding Field Day 2009 (i.e. discuss what went right, what went wrong, and how to make next year’s event even better.)   A common request was to “fix the outdoor A/C or move the event to October.”  In other words, it was hot out there that weekend.   We also discussed possible on-the-air training net topics to be covered over the upcoming 60 days during the Tuesday night training nets.

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The much shortened version of my full 3-day Jump Team Boot Camp which was offerred for a July date  has been cancelled due to not enough interested parties signing up.

This was to include such sections as site survey before structures are erected, sheltering and how/where to properly put them up, station operating posts, antenna building and erection, power generation, food support/dining areas, message handling, troubleshooting your station, propagation, water purification, basic survival techniques, creating a complete EmComm cache of gear to have on the ready, etc.

All participants would have been exposed to every phase so they would have been able to “do it all” from scratch in case of an emergency, with session taught by a team of experienced communicators and also survival experts from the military.

Note: My full 3-day boot-camp is still being held in late October. We will go through the same  steps needed to set up and run a complete emergency communications complex at a location where nothing would be standing and included will be a comprehensive book/guide enabling people to start their own emergency communications jump team in their area.

Bob W2IK

Shane NS5D has announced that the Debriefing (Wrap-up) meeting for this year’s Field Day effort will be on the agenda during the Tuesday, July 7th, meeting of the Bexar County ARES group at the San Antonio EOC (located inside Brooks City Base on the SE side of San Antonio). Meeting starts at 6:45pm.   ARES meetings are typically open to any interested ham radio operator to attend.

However having said all that, I would suggest that if you were interested in attending, and you aren’t one of the regular attendees, that you please contact Shane for more details since admission into this area is generally subject to slightly higher security than when ARES meets at the Red Cross, plus it tends to be a bit confusing for the first time visitor. 

Please be thinking about your Field Day experiences and be prepared to stand up and talk about them at our next ARES meeting on Tuesday, July 7th at 6:45pm at the EOC

Especially focus on what you will do differently next time, whether it be Field Day or a deployment to the field. Folks that participated in other Field Day events besides Bexar County’s are also invited to share their lessons learned.

Regards,
Shane NS5D

W2IK- NNN0KSI – NNN0GBY2, from San Antonio, Texas, will be donating 150 copies of his amateur radio emergency communications training course (on CD) so they may be given out at EmComm East, held in Rochester, New York in early October 2009.

In the past, he has given out hundreds of copies of this training guide, for free, to dozens of clubs, including REACT and ARES groups throughout the country and Canada, Pacificon 2008 (held in California last year), as well as two special emergency antennas of his design and plans, and authoring a special “white paper” for Communications Academy 2007 as per their request when health problems prevented him from giving a lecture.

He will also be donating one of his VHF emergency antenna kits to this event as a free raffle.

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Seasons change and as they do, so do our emergency communications priorities. With the advent of Summer, in this case a bit earlier, June 1st marks the beginning of “Hurricane Season”. It’s been predicted to be a very active period.

Many newly licensed hams have joined the amateur radio ranks just in time to become useful communicators should an emergency caused by severe weather arise. There is always a need for trained emergency communications personnel, but this is especially true in the areas which are more likely to be impacted by a hurricane, those regions being the Atlantic and Gulf Coast areas. However, it takes more than just a license and a hand-held radio to make you a useful part of emergency communications. It also takes preparation, training and practice.

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