San Antonio Hams

Don’t forget that SARO is holding their quarterly membership meeting this Friday at Martha’s Mexican Restaurant (Corner of Babcock Rd & Huebner) on the NW side of San Antonio. SARO president Erik Olsen reminds members and visitors that they “need not buy a meal or drink” if they choose to attend, but aren’t interested in eating.  Meeting starts at 7:30pm, but feel free to come early if you want to eat prior to the meeting, rather than during the meeting.  Visitors are always welcomed.

Program this time will be fairly short, primarily dealing with past events (like field day) and the two major upcoming public service events that SARO is responsible for coordinating, i.e. the LaVernia Wild West Hammerfest bike ride in September and the BikeMS event in October.  Come learn more about how to volunteer for these events. 

One note:  2009 BikeMS volunteers are being required to submit for a background check, no credit check involved, just criminal background check.  Those volunteers who worked the BPMS150 Houston to Austin ride last April have already had their checks completed and do not need to have it done a second time within 12 months.

More info @ SARO’s website, www.sarepeater.net

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

We’ve been running a new Events Calendar on this site for the past few months. Anybody that was raised to “editor” status, has been able to post their own events on the calendar thru the dashboard interface (what you see after you log in as an elevated user).

You have the option to create a post for each event (which appears immediately) or not. If you are posting a series of routine meetings / recurring events, etc., I’d suggest NOT creating a post each time, or we’ll have a bunch of very similar postings all saying we’ve got X’s meeting on July, August, September, October, etc. Boring!

Feel free to contact me direct, info@sanantoniohams.org , if you have questions or ideas about how to use this feature.   The concept behind this feature, is to let others post events, so I don’t have to post them all myself.
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Title: Bandera 100K Ultra-Marathon
Location: Hill Country State Natural Area – Bandera, TX
Link out: Click here
Description: Hill Country REACT and San Antonio Region Amateurs have provided Comms support for this event over the last 5 years. There are 5 fixed and a couple of rover positions to be filled over the 24 hr event. Typically 10-14 operators are needed! Safety, Supply and Tracking logistics are involved. For the 2010 event we are adding Packet to facilitate the tracking logistics, and with some technical help, will provide live internet updates to the families and friends of the participants at home! For more information or to volunteer, contact Louis Upton @mailto:k1stx@yahoo.com (210-687-4347) or Gary Tangrady @ k5gst@live.com. Thank You!
Start Date: 2010-01-09
Start Time: 06:30
End Date: 2010-01-10
End Time: 07:30

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

Hill Country REACT will be coordinating the annual 4th of July parade up at Startzville, TX, on the south side of Canyon Lake again this year.    Hams from any club are welcome to participate, you do not need to be a REACT member in order to volunteer to work this event.  Some members of REACT, GVARC and Hayes Caldwell ARES are already scheduled for this event.  

Parade line-up starts around 9am, but we need to be in place before then. The parade usually starts at 11am, once the Confederate Air Force completes their traditional annual fly-over.  Clean your car / truck / suv / RV / mini-van / motorcycle and be ready to jump in line at the back of the parade after the staging area clears. 

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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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This report just received from Anthony Jackson, KE5PWX, in his Smart Car, aka  known on the radio as “Smart Car 42” when he wasn’t at RS8 or RS2.

TOUR DE CURE, 2009: A QUICK REPORT FROM RS8, RS2 AND POINTS IN-BETWEEN

I had a great time working the TDC. It was quite a learning experience and I hope to participate in this capacity next year as well as volunteering at other community service events.

First, a few word about yours truly may help to understand this report. My wife says I am the “Perfect Storm” of impulsiveness, chaos, and obsession. She knows me pretty well, so I make every effort to slow down, organize, and limit myself when I become overly infatuated with a given endeavor. I work hard to overcome these character defects, but I’m afraid they still often come shining through. I get a true sense of satisfaction from times when I can honestly say to myself , “you were useful”, but enough about me.

If I were to advise anyone running a rest stop, or any portable station, it would be to say, “Get organized and fight to stay that way.”

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I wish to thank all of those hams who came out to help us the other weekend with the Annual Tour de Cure for the American Diabetes Association. We had approximately 1,700 registered riders this year, almost a 50% increase over 2008’s event.

Erika Bayless, the San Antonio ADA Tour de Cure Director, had this to say about this year’s event:

Whoo-hoo!  We made it!  What a fantastic weekend– it was long hours, hard work and lost sleep, but in the end we had 1,700 cyclists register and we have raised over ½ million for the American Diabetes Association’s mission.  Job well done!  The ADA staff could NOT have done it without you all.  ADA volunteers are the backbone to reaching the numbers that we do in South Central Texas.  Please take the week to reflect on what a difference you have made in the lives of the over 23 million Americans with diabetes and how the dollars we raised will help others like our Youth Ambassadors, Greg and Colby. Thank you.

Once again, we depended heavily upon the GVARC 147.000 ham radio repeater on both days for our primary net. We ran net control on Saturday out of San Marcos using Al Fields KE6LGE’s excellent RV. Al & Louis Upton K1STX were our initial net control stations, later supplemented by Jeff Schmidt N5MNW who also set up the APRS tracking system for us.    The 147.000 repeater covered all the way from San Antonio north past San Marcos to just the other side of Kyle, Texas.   Only one rest stop reported difficulties hitting the 147.o00, and that was the rest stop nearest Buda, TX, closer to Austin, which used the Austin 146.94 repeater instead.

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The picture to the right was taken in March of this year when former President George W. Bush met up with Bob Hejl, W2IK, while the former President was touring the “Center For The Intrepid” where W2IK works.

The Center For The Intrepid is part of the BAMC military hospital complex in San Antonio where “Wounded Warriors” have physical therapy and are outfitted with the latest in prosthetic limbs.  

W2IK explained to Bush that the last time he had seen him was when he was doing emergency communications work at “Ground Zero” during the World Trade Center Disaster in 2001. After hearing that, Bush slapped him on the back and said : “God Bless you for being there. It’s an honor to shake your hand.”

After some small talk, such as W2IK explaining how he moved down to Texas in 2002, married a “good Texas woman” (Krissy, KD5YTN)  and how he knew it was a Texas residency requirement to root for a Texas football team, the former President finished his building tour.