San Antonio Hams

In the spirit of, as Lee, N5NTG, put it: “….it struck me how much the “turf boundaries” between clubs has shrunk, …… I think that “shrinking” is a good thing to be happening” 

In the spirit of cooperation, the Bexar Operators Group has offered to underwrite and offer their “2010 Jump Team Boot Camp” to members of the Chaparral Amateur Radio Club (which happens to also be the Guadalupe County ARES group).

This would be the third “Jump Team Boot Camp” given by the Bexar Operators Group. It would be a two-day (not three day) deployment event at a site with no facilities north-east of Austin. This “Jump Team Boot Camp” will concentrate on amateur radio and the ways and means to get a communications jump team operational should there be a need to deploy some distance from your home and communicate in the aftermath of a disaster. This session is planned for the weekend of  March 20-21st, but we are open to other weekend dates within this Spring time frame.
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Members of the Chaparral Amateur Radio Club (which happens to also be the Guadalupe County ARES group) set up and tested NVIS antennas at the county EOC in Seguin on Sunday, September 13th.   Their goal was to design an antenn that could be raised or lowered from the ground, in order to find that sweet spot where the noise floor was the lowest.  

We’re hoping to get an after action report to be added here in a few days, so please check back for more details about the results of this test.

The following photos were taken during the event by the well known local NVIS antenna consultant and guru, Bob W2IK, who was obviously present but not shown in the photos since he was on the other side of the camera. 

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Topic: AFTER ACTION REPORT
Event: NAVY-MARINE CORPS MARS / REACT HURRICANE EXCERCISE
Conducted : AUGUST 29, 2009
Written by: Bob Hejl – W2IK – W5BOG – NNN0KSI – NNN0GBY2 NMC MARS STX ECOM 
Report Released: September 4, 2009

The joint exercise as conducted by Navy-Marine Corps MARS, REACT and Bexar Operators Group on August 29, 2009 also encompassed other groups who wished to test inter-service communications during the scenario of a hurricane hitting the Texas gulf coast just north of Corpus Christi.

These other groups included / covered:

• Guadalupe County OEM
• Hays County Sheriff’s Office
• Caldwell County EOC
• San Marcos Police Department
• Nueces County EOC
• National Weather Service – Corpus Christi
• National Weather Service – New Braunfels
• Central Texas Medical Center
• Chaparral Amateur Radio Club
• Hays/Caldwell Hams Amateur Radio Club
• Hays/Caldwell ARES Guadalupe VOAD
• Lockhart Police Department
• Driscoll Children’s Hospital – Corpus Christi
• One Army MARS Station
• Guadalupe Valley Amateur Radio Club (provided the VHF repeater)

If we left out any additional groups who participated, please contact us with the proper details. – Bob

We were testing out the MOU’s between REACT and NMC MARS as well as intercommunication skills. The exercise began at 11 AM local time with three phases: Pre-Land Fall (testing evacuation communications) , Land Fall (testing up to date weather conditions and storm damage) and Post Land Fall (evacuees returning to their homes, damage assessment, etc) In the spirit of cohesiveness, the operation was a success.

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On Saturday, August 29th, there were a few of us who got up when the chickens did, to get our radios and portable antennas ready for a South Texas Hurricane Drill.    Some operators chose locations that were pre-set up and air conditioned, others like me chose to “rough it” in the great outdoors without any AC.   Fortunately for us, the weather cooperated and it didn’t storm on us, nor did it get as hot as recent days.   My van’s thermometer (sitting out there in the sun on black asphalt) got up to 102, but it wasn’t that hot inside our very shaded shelter area.  We should have brought a box fan with us, but we didn’t think about that until we were already there and set up.

Hill Country REACT Team was tasked with staffing the state rest area located on west bound IH-10 at the 619 mile marker.  To convert that description into plain English, this was the last major rest stop on IH-10 for folks coming west from Houston or the coast, prior to Seguin or even San Antonio, TX.  This rest stop has been used in previous (actual) evacuations to monitor traffic flow on the interstate, so that emergency officials (primarly in San Antonio) could be given advance notice of mass arrivals.    We only truly needed to run 2 meters VHF capability here, but we experimented with a couple of HF antennas as well.

Today, three members (Lee N5NTG, Gary K5GST, Ray KE5KHN) of our REACT Team set up as part of a much larger drill, a drill that saw at least 2 ARES groups, our REACT Team, the Bexar Operators Group, South TX Navy-Marine Corps MARS, an Army MARS station, 2 National Weather Service Offices, multiple county EOC’s both near SA and down by the coast, etc.

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Title: Chaparral ARC / GCARES
Location: Guadalupe County Emergency Management Office – 415 E. Donegan – Seguin
Description: Monthly meeting of the Chaparral Amateur Radio Club a.k.a. Guadalupe County ARES. All licensed Amateurs and prospective licensees are welcome to attend!
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-09-08

Title: CARC / GCARES Monthly Meeting
Location: 415 E. Donegan – Seguin
Description: Monthly meeting of the Chaparral Amateur Radio Club a.k.a. Guadalupe County ARES. All licensed Amateurs and prospective licensees are welcome to attend!
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-07-14

We’ve just added a new club listing for Chaparral Amateur Radio Club in Seguin, TX, aka Guadalupe County ARES, bringing us up to 31 clubs / groups listed on that page.

Our thanks to Louis K1STX for bringing this information to our attention. Louis wears many hats (i.e. belongs to many clubs) like so many of us hams do now a days, but that’s the only way we are able to keep this site current with news.

We invite anyone else who has updated club or ham radio news, to post it on our site.

Just registed as a user on the Blog, and then contact Lee N5NTG via email to request “author” privileges. All articles are subject to editing / moderation by Lee (since he’s responsible for the site), but you’ll find Lee to be fairly lenient when it comes to posting topics.   We prefer to restrict postings to information that might possibly be of interest to hams in the South Central area of Texas, but sometimes you’ll find stuff in there “just because.”