San Antonio Hams

2009 ALAMO RIDE to the RIVER
MY PERSONAL THANKS

The first BikeMS: Ride to the River is over and it was quite the event.  As you all know, Saturday started with rain and it continued all day.  The weather deteriorated all day forcing a multitude of changes such as the closure of the River Road Century Extension, the move of the Lunch location, the move of Breakpoint 4, and the re-routing of the course into New Braunfels. 

All of these major changes were forced after the start of the ride and all of them were made very smoothly.  These changes went smoothly in no small part to you, the Amateur Radio operators.  You reported to your locations on-time and prepared to provide communications. 

 The flexibility of the Amateur Radio community is it’s hallmark and you proved that again this weekend.  My thanks to the Breakpoint Operators, the Shadows for the officials, the medical team and safety team.  By providing essential communications under adverse conditions you helped to make this ride both successful and safe.

 As Saturday’s weather continued to worsen with extreme rain, fog and ground lighting strikes, the ride was cut short.  The SAG and Motor Marshal Teams were fantastic, getting hundreds of riders off the course in these extreme conditions.  Read the rest of this entry »

I put together this video after the 2009 La Vernia Wildwest Hammerfest.  Probably missed some items, but here it it.  Featuring some well known ham radio operators and hundreds of bicycle riders who came out that day just so I could try and make this video.

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Yes, I know that this event was over a week ago, but I just uploaded the finished video clip from this event to Youtube.com.

About 250 athletes participated in this year’s event, despite the constant light rain. At least it wasn’t a thunderstorm, which would have caused cancelation. As it was, the event organizers did chop off 2 miles from the bicycle route, because that was one mile going up a very steep hill, and the riders would have then been traveling at high speed down a very slick paved street on the way back.  Despite what the logo above says, the planned bike route was only 12 miles, chopped to 10 miles due to weather considerations for safety.

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Around 5:30am on Saturday morning, 09/19/2009, way before the chickens even thought about waking up, there were a bunch of crazy folks talking on the 147.04 repeater, all saying they were heading toward LaVernia for some bicycle event. 

The San Antonio Repeater Organization (SARO) organized the hams for this event, which was billed as the 2nd annual event, even though it was the 3rd year.  Seems that last year (2008) the event got canceled due to a pesky hurricane that was threatening to hit the gulf coast of Texas, and that hurricane was going to use up the law enforcement resources needed by the event, plus the threat of extremely bad weather might have endangered the riders.

Originally, Gordon K5SUZ was slated to coordinate hams for this event, but due to the death of Liliane KC5AQP a couple weeks prior, he asked Eric WB5ZJQ and Lee N5NTG to take over the operation.   We were a bit short handed today, after a couple of last minute cancelations and no-shows, but we all pitched in and some did double duty to cover rest stops until we could shift another ham over to that location.  We had 10 SAG vehicles, but only 6 had hams riding in them, so we used cellular phones to try and coordinate the other 4 drivers.   We had 5 rest stops and 10 Motorcycle Marshals.   

Net Control was ran by the Manley Family, with Charles KD5EXS and Charlie W5BRC were most frequently heard as NCS, with Barbara KB5RLF covering their occasional need to take breaks.

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I thought that might get your attention! 🙂

BikeMS Valero 2009 Ride To The River is needing a few more reliable hams to serve as police shadows during the upcoming BikeMS event on October 3rd and 4th. You get to ride in the front (passenger) seat of a police patrol car for this 2 day event, operating your ham radio and passing instructions to/from the officer via Ham Radio Net Control.

All BikeMS volunteers must pass a background check for criminal and driving records, but you won’t want to volunteer to get in your assigned patrol car if you have outstanding warrants, or the 2 day trip might get longer. Fortunately for us, the majority of hams in our area don’t generally worrry about warrants, since they tend to keep their noses clean (legal wise at least). I don’t personally know of any hams that would be affected by this background check.

What would you need in order to volunteer?

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Today marks 8 years ago that the United States was attacked by terrorists. 8 years ago, today, amateur radio stepped up to the task of supporting the relief efforts during this most trying time. Below is the story of what one ham, who now resides in San Antonio, did to help his country.

http://www.w5bog.com/world-trade-center.html

W2IK

Later this month on August 29th, the combined talents of Navy-Marine Corps MARS, REACT, National Weather Service, Bexar Operators Group and others will work together during a hurricane drill. Information will be passed using both MARS EEI and standard text messaging when a “hurricane” landfalls on an area just north of Corpus Christi. We will also have coastal hospitals and Skywarn personnel working the event.  The drill is scheduled for the morning of Saturday, August 29th.

This will be a test of various MOUs and our ability to communicate with each other in case a real weather event should erupt.

This is NOT just some “table top” drill, as stations will actually deploy along the coast and along evacuation routes from both Houston and Corpus Christi. In addition, there will also be stations up and running at two National Weather Service offices (New Braunfels & Corpus Christi).  And now it looks like “someone invited” Tropical Storm Bill to come help make our drill be a bit more realistic. 🙂

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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.

Today’s Small Texan Triathlon was sponsored / organized by Britton Bikes of San Antonio, TX, and had 137 entries.   

The route included a swim (actual distance was 1480 meters) in the Boerne City Lake (just north of Boerne, TX), a 45k bike ride that went north up thru Waring, TX, and back, and a 10k run that went over the dam behind the lake cross-country, then out on Ranger Creek Road to a turn-around point and back to the park. 

There was just enough water left in the lake (which is also used for Boerne’s water supply) for them to swim, once the swimmers waded out about 30′ from shore.  The swim route was altered from the planned 1500 meter course due to shallow waters in the lake. We had joked about whether “mud wrestling” qualified for a USAT sanctioned triathlon (it doesn’t). 

The event organizers had “swimmer helpers” waiting out in the water at the finish shore when the swimmers returned, to help the tired swimmers change from a horizontal swim position, to walking upright once more on the rocky / muddy bottom of the lake until they reached the concrete ramp. 

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Used my emergency go-kit today to run net control for the Small Texan Triathlon up in Boerne, TX. 

I took the photo (on right) while standing on the back ramp of the race director’s trailer used for running net control during this event.  I’ll post a separate blog entry with my photos from today’s event.  We were on the air from 7am until about 12:30pm for the event that had 137 entries.  1480 meter swim, 45k bike ride, 10k run, certified course.  Temp only got up to the low 90’s by the time we shut down net control, but we also had a fine light breeze, enough to keep us cool inside the trailer, but not strong enough to bother the athletes.

Using this go-kit with the bigger external antenna wWas perhaps a bit “over-kill” in terms of my actual needs since the 2 meter repeater we used was full scale on an HT antenna, but as I told one of the other hams, the big antenna in the air and the rolling toolbox with radios looks more impressive to the (non-ham) event organizers or other spectators.  I was able to charge 2 of my HT batteries using the DC-AC 300w power converter just to do it.  Didn’t actually need the extra batteries or HT’s charged, but I wanted a real life test.

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