San Antonio Hams

I spent about 8 hours at the AARO Field Day at Raymond Russell Park, where they almost ended up with a Marachi Band for entertainment (band went to the wrong pavilion), then moved on to visit the KARS Ham Club in Boerne before swinging back down south around midnight to the SARC Ham Club in Shavano Park.

By the time I left SARC, still running on those 5 hour energy drinks, I started to head south to ROOST, knowing they would be still running full steam ahead even in the middle of the night, but sanity prevailed, and I advised my “extra” wife that I’d be heading home soon instead of visiting more FD sites this weekend.

I used my cell phone to make some videos and take some pics, but the phone battery died & had to be recharged after I left AARO, so no middle of the night pics from KARS or SARC to be shared.  I’ve been promised pics from other hams who were at those locations, however.

AARO did a 1 day only FD event, starting setup around 10am when the park opened (county park hours restricted how long they could stay there), and shutting down & leaving before midnight when the county park turned into a pumpkin one more.  They were running 6 stations in different modes (voice / digital / cw / satellite) on various bands, and had more antennas and generators than I’ve seen in a long time.

Most of the actual radio operators were taking it very seriously, but the bulk of the 50+ hams were just there for the workshops, free food & fellowship.  A few were experimenting with different antennas, mostly home brew, and learning new modes.  There were a handful of brand new hams show up, and AARO took extra time to show them the operations and get them talking on the air to make a contact or two.

Workshops also were conducted on various topics:

• Proper Soldering Techniques
• Building DiPole Antennas
• Quadrafillic (sp?) Antennas
• Anderson Power Pole

Click the link below to continue this article & see some of the pics I took.

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I’m putting out a request here for area 2012 Field Day reports, complete with photos.

If you visited or hosted a Field Day event, and want to share your photos and stories, or even your results, feel free to post them here. Just register on this site (see link to the right) if you haven’t already done so, then send an email to info@sanantoniohams.org to request a status upgrade to allow you to post stories.

I won’t allow personal flames or attacks, so every new author gets moderated until I know they are doing okay.  I can also offer you assistance and advice if you are having problems uploading photos, or whatever.  One trick it to write up your story in MS Word, or another processor, then copy / paste it into the “Add new post” window online.  Add your title, pick a topic category or two (like Field Day, or club name), upload some photos from your computer to show either one by one, or as a gallery at the bottom of your article, and tada!

If you are a ham operator, already registered on this site, you may be already setup to do that.  Just login and add a new post. If you forgot your password, no worry, just click the link to say “forgot my password” and you will get a link emailed to you to create a new password.  I don’t know your password and don’t want to.  The software will automatically handle that for you without my manual intervention.

Registration for being an author on this site, is NOT the same as subscribing to the newsletter.  That’s a separate registration process.  Send your subscription request to subscribe@sanantoniohams.org to be automatically added to the list.  I’ve got about 450 hams already on that list, after dropping about a dozen that bounced from the last mailing.

Hope to see you here soon!

Lee Besing N5NTG
210-771-7075 cell (voice / text okay)

We have collected information for the following Ham Club Field Day Locations, in and around the San Antonio extended metro area…. 

• Alamo Area Radio Organization (AARO)…
• San Antonio Radio Club (SARC)…
• Radio Operators of South Texas (ROOST)…
• Kendall Amateur Radio Society (KARS)… (Boerne, TX)
• Guadalupe Valley Amateur Radio Club (GVARC)… (New Braunfels, TX)
• Hill Country Amateur Radio Club (HCARC)… (Kerrville, TX)
• South Texas DX Contest Club (STXDXCC)… (Bandera, TX)
• Atascosa Amateur Radio Club (AARC)… (Poteet, TX)
• Coyote Amateur Radio Club (KS5TX) (Uvalde, TX)

ARRL’s Master Field Day Search Site – Map 

See below for details…  Not all clubs have registered with ARRL’s website.

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Staples Dam Lowerside

This was only my second year to participate in this challenging event, with about 135 canoe teams starting to paddle down the river at 9am Saturday morning (6/9), and continuing on down the river over 260 miles until they reached the Gulf Coast at Seadrift, Texas, 2 to 4 days later.  Or else quit along the way.This year, 141 teams entered, 134 teams started in San Marcos, and 80+ teams actually made it all the way to the finish line.  The first team to finish got there just before midnight on Sunday night, and the last team to arrive got there sometime late on Wednesday morning I think.  See the event website at www.TexasWaterSafari.orgfor full details.

This was also the first year they had a death in the race, with a contestant being flown on Sunday (day 2) to a hospital back in San Marcos, after he collapsed.  (details on their website).

Ham Radio operators staffed a boatload of checkpoints (pun intended) starting about the 16 mile point at Staples Dam (where my son David KD5MTJ and myself N5NTG where stationed).   Each checkpoint ham team would record the team #, time in and out, and then enter that info into an Excel spreadsheet.  Once entered, it was transmitted over Packet Radio downstream to all the other checkpoints using digipeaters that had been setup as relays all the way to the coast.    Some checkpoints have become family traditions, where you almost have to inherit the assignment to be able to work it, but extra hams are usually always welcomed.  The list of hams is quite long, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to list them all here without missing someone and possibly hurting their feelings. 🙂

I made a trip out to this location the week before the event, to contact the land owners and familiarize my self with the layout. That pre-planning helped make setup much smoother, because the owners allowed us to tap into their electricity and thus avoid the need for generator or extended battery operations on the day of the event.  It also let us find out the “secret” location of the flush toilets inside the barn, instead of making the long trek across the bridge to the porta potties on the other side of the river.

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