San Antonio Hams

Our thanks to all the hams and other volunteers who responded to our pleas for help!  

We’ve now got every Rest Stop, Start Line, Finish Line, SAG Van, etc. covered for Day 1 and Day 2!   Give yourselves a big pat on the back!

But… Oops, just found out the Tour de Cure staff wants TWO MORE SAG VANS!   Special purpose vans to be used to haul mostly just people, not bikes and equipment, but I’d bet on still needing a couple of the van’s bench seats out anyway!

Special Assignment:     Pickup Van on Friday before 6pm, or early  Saturday morning from Enterprise.  Arrive in San Marcos at the Texas State University, designated finish line area by noon or earlier.   Start shuttling riders who finished early, over to the river toobing location, and bring them back after they get all wet and tired (again).

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Once again, the regional American Diabetes Association’s Tour de Cure event is upon us!  May 22-23rd are the Dates.  This is a 2-day event starting at the Retama Park in Selma (Just north of San Antonio, Off IH-35 & 1604).    Day 1 ends in San Marcos at the Texas State University, Butler Dorm.   Day 2 starts at the same place as Day 1 Finish, and ends at Akins High School in south Austin.

HELP IS STILL NEEDED!  

SAG DRIVERS & REST STOP HAMS (Day 1 only)

We’ve got a few vacancies left for driving either a Toyota Truck (from Austin Champion Toyota) or a 15 Passenger Van (from Enterprise in San Antonio near the airport).   Call Lee at 210-771-7075 ASAP If you want to volunteer cause time is running out.  1 Toyota Truck is available as of Sunday  night, and 2 of the 15 Passenger Vans are available as of Sunday night.   We could also put a few more folks into Documation SCION sag cars, but that is being controlled by another person and the # of vacancies is unknown as of Sunday night.

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When: June 12th and 13th
Where: Hill Country State Natural Area – Bandera, TX
What: ACTHA (American Competitive Trail Horse Association) Event – a not-for-profit event.

Details: We need 8 -10 operators each day.

Saturday, June 12th – event will run from 0900 to 1300hrs – lunch at 1400hrs – Breakfast for volunteers will be provided 0730. Proceeds benefit the AQHBA youth scholarship Program.

Sunday, June 13th – event runs from 1400hrs to 1700hrs – Breakfast at 0730, lunch at 1200hrs – The late start time is due to a nationwide event that is attempting to break a Guiness Book of World Records title. Proceeds from Sundays event benefit ACTHA Horse Rescue Operations.

ACTHA events judge the ability of a horse and rider to negotiate natural obstacles, handle standard task, and the overall condition of the horse. Although rare accidents and injuries do occur.

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Time to take a look at the events calendar once again.  Did you know we post a regular calendar of events on this site, and let other hams post club events directly?  If your club has an event they want other Hams to know about, or want help with, post it here for free.  Contact the webmaster, Lee N5NTG, to get a userID upgraded to let you do this.

2010 Events Happening Soon!

• April 17-18th – BPMS150 – Houston – Austin Bicycle event, 2 days.  Contact Milton N5HMJ for details.  Almost to late for new volunteers, but hey, give it a try!
• April 16th – Belton Ham Expo -Contact www.tarc.org
• April 16-17th – Texas State Ladies Championship Chili Cook-off – Starke Park, Seguin, TX. Help out Friday evening, Saturday daytime.  Easy work.  Contact Louis K1STX
• April 18th – Fiesta 100 Bicycle event, Contact Gordon K5SUZ
• April 24th – Canyon Lake Chamber of Commerce BBQ – Contact Charlie KC5NKK
• May 1st – 5K Run @ Bulverde Senior Citizens Ctr – Contact Wade W5ERX
• May 1st – Special Olympics Spring Games – Harlendale Stadium – Contact Lee N5NTG
• May 22-23rd – Tour de Cure Bicycle event, San Antonio to Austin, 2 days.  – Contact Lee N5NTG
• June 11-12th – Plano HamCom
• June 12th – Texas Water Safari 
• June 26-27th – Field Day Weekend – various locations
• July 4th – Fourth of July Parade – Startzville – Contact Wade W5ERX

March 6th 2010

The Hill Country REACT Radio Team assisted with the Heart of the Hills Endurance Ride held at the 5400 acre Hill Country State Natural Area located outside of Bandera, Texas.  Team Members Gary Tangrady – K5GST, Al Fields – KE6LGE, Wade Martyn – WB5C and Team Leader Louis Upton – K1STX provided communications for the 25 and 50 mile events. 75 participants total were tracked at 4 checkpoints through the multiple loop course utilizing 2m simplex and the WD5FWP repeater located in Pipe Creek.

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W2IK now has a new EMCOMM only web site:  WWW.W2IK.NET   which contains emcomm info including parts of his 250 page “EMCOMM AND YOU” CD.    

This site is a work in progress and is constantly growing, but it’s presently  loaded with lots of useful information about developing your own emergency communications skills.   

 This site contains ONLY EMCOMM material.

The new Canadian training course contains over 100 pages which were written by W2IK, so we must be doing something right.

Just a reminder that the Bandera 100k Ultra Endurance Trail Run is coming up on the weekend of January 9th and 10th, 2010, out at the Hill Country State Natural Area.  Very poor cell phone coverage, but we’ve got a local 2 meter repeater that does fairly well, and we’ll be putting up a temporary Ham 440 repeater and UHF Commercial repeater.

We’ll be trying to communicate this  year between check points to net control using Packet as well as voice, trying to track runner numbers live as they pass thru a check point.   So far about 550 runners have signed up for this event, which includes a 25k, 50k and 100k (they do the 50k twice) trail run.  We aren’t talking running on paved streets, we’re talking cross country, over hill, over dale, round the tree, over the stump, thru the ravine; in other words, running thru stretches of trail  where even the horse patrol (yes, we’ll have them out there) and ATV Drivers can’t go.

Oh, and the weather?  What about it?  This event goes on no matter what the weather might be. It can be hot or cold, freezing, drizzling, raining, or sun shine, it won’t matter, the race goes on!  So come dressed / equipped to survive the weather, and just think of those poor chaps out there running after dark in their running shorts and LED headband lights.

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Santa used Paul Guido’s Vision motorcycle on Saturday December 19th, 2009 to deliver gifts to seven family’s in San Antonio. 
Here is a video from the local station.  Click here, or on the image to play…

It is too funny that they called my Vision a Harley in the title.  It was 65 degrees and Santa was sweating quite a bit in his suit.

Background on Elf Louise The Elf Louise Christmas Project is dedicated to providing a little bit of joy to Bexar County’s (San Antonio) less fortunate children.  The project began in 1969 when our founder, Louise Locker, was a student at Trinity University in San Antonio.

She found that for many San Antonio families, Christmas just did not exist.   Louise began to look for a way to provide a few Christmas presents to some of these children. That first year, with the help of a friend, she collected gifts for children in 13 families.

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Every year, the Hill Country REACT Team has been helping out the with the Christmas Parade in Sattler, Texas, just east of Canyon Lake. We organize and run the two parade staging areas, mix the two together before they hit the parade route, and ensure that the announcer knows about any changes before they reach his or her location. We get the help of a couple neighboring ham clubs from as far away as 50-70 miles (GVARC, HC Hams).

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We’ve put together a collection of photos taken during the December 12, 2009 Christmas parade in Sattler. We’ve already posted one story about it on this blog a day or so ago, the press release that thanked “Hill Country REACT and their unnamed volunteers” (which we then named).   But now, here are some photos from this event, mostly taken toward the back end of the parade lineup area.

We’re working on putting together another one of our videos, this time from footage taken during the parade, but all video editing takes time and computer resources, both which are frequently in short supply and high demand.

Here are our photos…

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