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.
Turned out the ability to generate 120vac power came in handy when their gas generator ran out of gas, and the gas can they “knew was full”, wasn’t.
Nearest gas station? About 10 miles away by car, and you had to drive thru the event route against the bike traffic to get there, so it took them about 30 minutes to get enough fuel to get the 3kw Honda generator back up and running to power the race computers, chip readers, ice storage trailer and the trailer that net control was operating from.
Fortunately, (a) my laptop had a good battery and didn’t notice the outage and (b) I still had AC power, but the race director’s laptop (not plugged into my go-kit) lasted about 5 minutes and powered down automatically while they were waiting for the guy to bring back a gas can of fuel. That meant they were generating race results by hand until they got the computer back up and running. Not fun!
For today’s event, I “pulled” my dual band ICOM mobile out of my van, connected the spare remote head control cable that I had just bought last week (see why you need to plan ahead?), and used one of my home-brew W2IK 2 meter antennas mounted to a extendable pool cleaning pole that was stuck on top of a tripon stand which put the antenna about 16′ up in the air. Could have gotten it to 20′ but didn’t need it. Only used about 25′ of RG-8X coax to connect the antenna to the radio. Had one small scare when a gust of wind came thru, blowing down signs and my antenna, but the coax was long enough that it didn’t jerk the radio off the top of my go-kit.
Note to self, connect coax thru a strain relief method to prevent that from happening. Would have been tragic to have my regular radio trashed because of carelessness.
