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
Tonight was the big night, the night that all three candidates running for the vacancy of ARRL South Texas Section Manager would speak in person before the San Antonio Radio Club during their regular monthly membership meeting.
Amazingly enough, all three candidates showed up on time and spoke, along with current SM Ray Taylor N5RAV who is “retiring” from that position (with no pension provided), and SEC Mike Schwartz, KG5TL.
This was from a ham out of the Houston, TX area. Every area is having record power being drawn from their grids due to the 100+ degree temps. – Lee N5NTG
I heard on the radio this morning that we set a record in Texas yesterday. The record was we taxed our electrical grid to its highest point ever.
They continued to say that between the hours of 3pm and 7pm was the peak time and we should cut back a little. 
Try not to use large appliances between 3pm and 7pm and don’t turn your air down to 72 when it’s 100+ outside. It won’t get there.
So to make this amateur related, turn off the amps. 🙂
Bill Rimmer, N5LYG
n5lyg@n5lyg.org
And I got this link off the Bexar County ARES list, linked to the Public Utilities Commission.
The Alamo Area Repeater Organization (AARO) held their monthly membership meeting on the NW side of town in Martha’s Mexican Restaurant, corner of Babcock Rd & Huebner Rd. 3 dozen plus hams gathered to hear about what happened on Field Day, discuss the possibility of being becoming an ARRL Affiliated Club (they voted to do it), and listen to Lee Cooper W5LHC of Austin, who talked about recent legisture that might affect ham radio; what passed, what didn’t pass, and what is still pending.
Most of you missed tonight’s ARES meeting that was held in a conference room inside the secure City’s EOC building over in Brooks City Base on the SE side of San Antonio.
About 2 dozen hams attended to do a debriefing regarding Field Day 2009 (i.e. discuss what went right, what went wrong, and how to make next year’s event even better.) A common request was to “fix the outdoor A/C or move the event to October.” In other words, it was hot out there that weekend. We also discussed possible on-the-air training net topics to be covered over the upcoming 60 days during the Tuesday night training nets.
GVARC reports that they did about double the number of QSO’s during this year’s FD as compared with last year, but then again, last year was a last minute shuffle from their “usual” place at the Comal County Fairgrounds over to Mike’s house on River Road with less than 2 hours to get set up for FD, and perhaps some members didn’t know how to find the new place (which was really comfy by the way). Here’s GVARC’s Field Day results: 350 QSOs for 593 points ( last year was 184 QSOs for 234 points ). Plus the mutiplier of course.
Under the direction of Mike, AB5EB, another JOTA (Jamboree On The Air) operation is scheduled to take place this October at the Overlook Point near the Canyon Lake dam in Texas to show scouts what amateur radio is all about. Planning will show the diversity of amateur radio as scouts talk to other scouts from all over the world.
The amateur radio operators, featuring Mike, AB5EB, Carlos, KE5DFK, Bob, W2IK, and others are ready to set up and operate several stations using several modes, such as voice, morse code (CW), digital and slow-scan television. Additional hams who would like to be a part in helping out scouts should contact Mike at: ab5ebdxer@gmail.com
Other events will be offered such as two of W2IK’s “McGyver” antenna building sessions where scouts build actual antennas from scrap materials and use them to make contacts. A merit badge class given by Mike, AB5EB might also be planned. Still in it’s planning stages, Mike wants this JOTA to be even better than the event held last year at this location where over 70 scouts attended. Stay tuned as the planning cements into another great JOTA event!
KARS has filed the following ARRL Field Day Report for 2009
1. Field Day Call Used: KB5TX GOTA Station Call: n/a
2. Club or Group Name: KARS
3. Number of Participants: 18
4. Number of transmitters in simultaneous operation: 5
5. Entry Class: Check only one. X A. Club or non-club portable
6. Check All power sources used. X Generator
7. ARRL / RAC Section: STX
8. Total CW QSO’s: 342 X 2 = Total CW QSO points: 684
9. Total Digital QSO’s: 0 X 2 = Total Digital QSO points: 0
10. Total Phone QSO’s: 247 X 1 = Total Phone QSO points: 247
11. Total QSO points: 931
12. Power Multiplier X 150 Watts or less = 2
13. Power Multiplier: 2
14. Claimed Score: 931 (Should this be 931 x2 = 1862 with power multiplier added?)
Today was the 19th Annual 4th of July Parade at Canyon Lake, held in Startzville, TX, and sponsored by the Startzville VFW Post. And of course the members of Hill Country REACT were there helping in the Staging Area to get the parade off to a smooth, on-time start.
In the past few years, we’ve had the help from some other area hams, and this year was no exception.
Hams from San Antonio, the Guadalupe Valley Amateur Rado Club (New Braunfels), and Hayes Caldwell County ARES group (San Marcos) showed up to assist REACT with this fun event. Read the rest of this entry »
W2IK | 
ARES, Disaster Response, General Ham Radio, MARS, New Hams, Public Service, W2IK | 
07 2nd, 2009| 
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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