San Antonio Hams

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

W2IK writes: I have listed a few tips which may make your field day setups more successful and more enjoyable.

1. When setting up antennas within close proximity: If you are using wire antennas such as dipoles, and they run parallel to each other there will be interference on your HF operating bands in the form of hash so arrange them at right angles to each other and at slightly different heights. If you use wire antennas such as dipoles, try to stay away from trap dipoles and use full length antennas instead.  You may also wish to run your dipoles in different configurations such as have one as an “inverted V” and another as a sloper, etc. An antenna cut to the exact band you are using will decrease interference to and from other bands. Do not use compromise or “all band” antennas. On HF, stay away from vertical antennas as they receive too much man-made noise from sources such as generators, etc.

2. When operating within a tight area, as required by FD rules, it also pays to use “band pass filters” such as those manufactured by ICE. I have a full set of these HF filters and they work great. They are only about $ 38 per band and drastically reduce interference from your other operating posts. If your pocketbook can’t afford them, use coax “stub” filters. The lengths of these and how to build them can be found at: http://www.k1ttt.net/technote/k2trstub.html They are simple to make and easy to use. Both systems have been used by the major DXpeditions all over the world with great success. On HF frequencies make sure each operating station is properly grounded. Do NOT use a common ground for all your operating posts.

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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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 The photo below was taken today while I was testing the output of my solar panels that I’ll be using for the W5BOG (Bexar Operators Group) Field Day up at Lost Maples State Park. We will be setting up in the afternoon on Friday, June 26th so as to also operate during a Navy-Marine Corps MARS traffic net that evening. Field Day starts on Saturday, June 27th and runs through noon Sunday, June 28th. It is a 24 hour event, but we’ll be doing other ham-related things, including experiments, while we are there.

Since the duty cycle of SSB is much less than FM (25% vs 100%),  they’ll be able to easily keep my six banks of marine deep cycle batteries charged.

 Combine this system and my 200 watt wind turbine unit (pix shows three blades before I added three more to make it much more efficient) will mean plenty of power for at least two SSB stations to operate. This setup will also be used for my jump team programs. I may even skip bringing any of my gas generators with me to my jump team boot camps. Anyone who wishes to join us at Lost Maples is free to do so. Bring a sleeping bag (we provide the tent) and whatever personal items you wish. (check out the park  and how to get there by clicking on the red “Lost Maples State Park” title above)  All power, including the LED lighting system, will be furnished using either battery charged solar energy or wind energy. Cooking will be accomplished using propane stoves. This will be a non-polluting  “GREEN” power operation. Antennas won’t be commerically made, but will be built “on the spot” as if deploying under emergency conditions. Come and learn how to operate during a real emergency situation where all you have is what’s brought to the site. Learn about site survey and set up from scratch, setting up and using solar and wind turbine power, duty cycles of equipment, propagation (how it works for or against you) and basic contesting skills from someone who has earned several operating awards and deployed emergency stations many times using survival skills acquired over the past 35 years. Since we are out in the field, I will even give mini-lessons on subjects such as how to filter “local water” using a 4- step filter system, of my own design, which ecom workers may need if deployed to a rustic area and run out of bottled water.   Learn alot and have a lot of fun! If you plan on coming, email me at:   alonestaryank@aol.com    

Bob  W2IK – W5BOG – NNN0KSI – NNN0BGY2  MARS Ecom

Yesterday, I prepared the April 2009 San Antonio Hams Electronic Newsletter and shipped it out (well, emailed it out) to more than 300 hams in the area.

This issue included the following News Items From The San Antonio Area:

• FREE CLASSIFIED ADS FOR HAMS
• 2009 Tour de Cure Update – May 30th-31st
• 2009 Field Day Plans in San Antonio – June 27-28
• Current Top Headlines, including April 1st Jokes

If you did NOT receive a copy of this informative newsletter, and want to, please send an email to me and we’ll make it happen.  I’ll need your name, call sign and email address in order to fill in all the blanks for the email manager that I’m using.

Of course, most of what was in the newsletter, is also on this Blog and the rest of the website, if you hunt long enough for it. 🙂

What the VE forgot to tell you, and the FCC didn’t print on your ham license…

Almost every ham radio related event will require you to get up before the chickens do. Yep, the early bird gets the worm!

Question: When is the best time for bargains at Ham Swap-Fests?  

Answer: During the first hour of the event, which will mean getting up, driving across the town or even part of the state, to get there first in line when the doors open at 8am.

Question: When do you need to be ready to drive your SAG van for the big bike tours?

Answer:  5am for the Houston BPMS150, 6AM for the San Antonio BikeMS

I’m being sort of sarcastic here, but the point is that 99% of the ham radio events, other than Field Day (which involves staying up way after the chickens go to sleep, and stay awake until way after the chickens have rested comfortably all night), require you to get up before dawn if you want to participate.   FD starts around Noon or 1pm, and runs 24 hours straight, non-stop, but the operators can change out and take breaks. You aren’t chained to your chair / stool for 24 hours without a potty break. 🙂

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I was doing some call sign lookups of our newer hams today (04/05/2009), and found these 4 pages on the web, with a list of 3,004 licensed hams in San Antonio, TX. (Note – turns out some of the hams on the list have expired licenses, so the actual number of “active” hams is a few hundred less than 3k. – Lee)

If you want to check and see who’s who, starting with AA5DB Oscar Delgado Lee Cook, visit this site when you have time to peruse it.

Click Here For The 4 Page List

I emailed out the very first electronic newsletter for San Antonio Hams website, to a list of about 250 hams in the San Antonio Area, plus a few from the IH-35 Corridor up towards Austin, and a few of our ham friends from the Houston area.

14 hours later, only 1 ham asked to be unsubscribed and that was taken care of automatically by the email campaign software I was using.   I had several responses thanking me for the information, especially the news about AA5XH’s passing (3/24/2009) and visitation service happening on Monday (03/30/2009).  Had one ham’s name crossed posted wrong with another ham, but he contacted me to get it corrected.  (Sorry about that, Harvey!)

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18 of 23 TSA Agents who participated in an almost week long communications training course conducted in here in San Antonio, passed their ham license exam on Wednesday, March 4th. This was the 2nd such session in San Antonio, the previous session being in May of 2008.

The TSA is trying to improve interoperability in their communications, and each major airport in the USA is being required to establish the ability to communicate via ham radion, in addition to their normal modes of communications (which include Sat Phones, etc.).

The TSA has purchased “go kits” containing ham radios, power supplies, antennas, and other items, sort of like the resources we now have at our EOC, so that they could send a ham radio operator / TSA agent down to the Rio Grande Valley or other areas where there were some of the smaller airports being affected by some emergency.  They have installed a “normal” ham radio station at their office here in San Antonio, which is off the airport’s premises and location which we won’t divulge due to security concerns.  They are ho[ping that in time of need, they will be able to depend upon the San Antonio Ham Radio community to provide them with extra operators to supplement their trained TSA employees.

San Antonio Radio Club’s VE Team led by Pat AD5BR, supplemented by some other VE’s from AARO, conducted the testing at a local hotel near the airport.  Following is a list of the VE’s who took time off in the middle of a workday to assist.

• Pat AD5BR
• Dave W5QS
• Terry K5ADF
• Bob K5AUW
• Lee N5NTG
• Bill WE5ET
• Teri KC5BJI
• Charles WA3PAY
• Harry AD5WR

Greg N5XO <n5xo@satx.rr.com>

It has been awhile since we had a Unusual Suspect Meet and Greet and with the repeater issues and many of us operating on simplex or other repeaters up in the Austin area we can not talk as often as we would all like.

So it’s TIME ONCE AGAIN TO HAVE A MEET AND GREET BREAKFAST.

WHAT: UNUSUAL SUSPECT MEET & GREET
WHEN: SUNDAY MARCH 22ND 2009 @ 9:AM
WHERE: BILL MILLERS BBQ {BREAKFAST TACO’S} AT IH-35 AND FM 3009
TOPICS:

• HANG OUT AND ENJOY GREAT COMPANY AND RECONNECT WITH FRIENDS.
• ALSO DISCUSSION OF THE 2009 UNUSUAL SUSPECT FIELD DAY DXPEDITION……

LET’S MAKE THIS A SUPER TURN OUT AND HOPE TO SEE EVERYONE THERE!!!!!!

RSVP to Greg suggested, but not required.   Dutch Treat.