San Antonio Hams

Five members of the Hill Country REACT Team made the trek north to the 2009 Austin Summerfest, a few went up for Friday and Saturday, others just for the big day, Saturday.   Those members included myself N5NTG, Gary K5GST, Joe W4CTH, Shane NS5D, and Wade W5ERX.     I took a few photos, but to make it easier on me while writing this blog post, I’ll wait and post most of them at the bottom of this article instead of embedding them as I go along.  I also won’t try to list all the names and call signs of everyone I met, for fear of leaving out someone accidently and causing them to think I didn’t care enough to mention them.

We saw members from most of the various San Antonio Area Ham Radio Clubs, including SARO, AARO, SARC, BOG, ROOST, REACT, ARES, and GVARC.  We probably had enough Bexar County ARES members present to hold a meeting. 🙂   

We found ham friends from the Austin area, Houston area, and the great folks from the Hayes / Caldwell ARES group who like to come south and help REACT with some of our public service events on a regular basis.

I drove up along with Gary K5GST in my van on Saturday morning, checked in at registration and then toured the rather modest tailgating area outside the Austin Marriot Airport South Hotel until the main exhibit hall opened at 8am. I didn’t find much to spend my $$ on, although apparently Gary found a few essentials that needed transport back to San Antonio.

I met lots of old friends, made new friends, and ran into folks I literally hadn’t seen in many, many years. Alfred (KC5VCF) & Patricia Fronefield (KI4TYP) have been getting “free” travel around the USA and the globe courtesy of the US Army for these past many years since I last saw them, but last month the Army saw fit to return Alfred to Ft. Hood where he’d be closer to those of us who helped him get a ham license. 🙂 They were able to make the short trip south to Austin long enough to buy a few ham radio toys and visit with me and other hams Alfred had known while in SA back in 1995-1996. (Sorry, didn’t take photo of this reunion. – Lee)

Grumpy WF5Y was spotted inside the exhibit hall, selling various ham radio electronics pieces parts with what appeared to be a level of success, cause he was smiling and waved when I took his photo, and I observed the highly desired phenomenom of cash exchanging hands (from other hams to Grumpy) during the morningl. If you need Anderson Power Pole connectors, junction boxes, antenna switches, fans, or other ham radio / electronic pieces parts, Grumpy might need to be your first local contact for them.  Grumpy is getting ready to put up an on-line store to sell his stuff, and we’ll post that link to the blog when it happens.

Bob W2IK and his wife Krissy KD5YTN from the Bexar Operators Group W5BOG were seen making the rounds, and picking up little odds and ends for his next antenna project.  Bob asked me if Ihad found the event’s talk-in station or any HF demonstration stations outside, but I had to say “no” that I had not found them.  Bob could probably have put on an antenna building demonstration if they could find a room with a ceiling tall enough.

Parking near the event was at a premium, but what else is new?     There were about 4-5 hotels in a row sharing minimum parking lots, plus a side street where lots of hams parked along the side hoping that the lack of a “no parking sign” wouldn’t preclude them from deciding to turn that 2nd traffic lane into a parking lane.  We had to park about 2 hotels down from the event hotel, but at least we found a shady spot that stayed shady in the afternoon. 🙂  At least we didn’t have to park across the highway and walk several blocks like what happened during one previous Summerfest event.

Antennas, Antennas, and more Antennas. I can remember that my non-ham ex-wife used to complain to me about having 2 ham radio antennas on my car, until I had showed her photos taken at various ham radio hamfests, and then she shut up.    Well, this  year’s event was no different.  If there was a way to put an antenna on a car/ truck / VW  Beetle, some ham found a way to do it differently. 

Some vehicles may have had more antennas per square inch than one of the FEMAs command trailers.  I walked around the parking lot snapping photos of those vehicles that caught my eye. There was one truck using a trailer hitch to extend out another 2-3 feet to mount his HF antennas, talk about a “knee knocker”!

There were only a few exhibits /organizations in the hallway outside the main exhibit hall area, for ARRL, ARES, Baptist Emergency / Disaster Response Communications Team, MSET (Austin’s Motorcycle Special Events Team).  Other groups were inside the exhibit hall (where I presume they may have had to pay for their table) including AMSAT.    The Sign Man of Baton Rouge was present, but he reported that sales were down from previous years and I noticed he did a steady business, but not the back breaking pace that he usually engaged in at these events. The local Austin ham dealer was there, as were a couple of the othe regular commercial vendors.

I spent quite awhile with Ron KE5RON who was representing the Baptist group, and with Karla K5RLA & Walt WB5YFW who were holding down ARRL booth in the afternoon.   Ron had his emergency radio kit on display, set up to run WinLink out of a briefcase (forgot to get a photo of that).  The briefcase wa a foam padded aluminum suitcase with a plastic mounting board for his 25am MFJ power supply (the tiny sized one), his TNC and dual band VHF/UHF radio, etc.  He had that in-line voltage monitor to watch his battery voltage levels, and his gel cel batteries were inside a plastsic ammo box next to the brief case.  Ron wisely used Anderson Power Pole connectors for all of his power connectors.

I brought in my own emergency ham radio go-kit on wheels to demonstrate, and had it set up briefly next to Ron’s exhibit area while we explained what features were included.   I had to go thru that presentation about 10 times as different hams stopped to look at it.  One ham asked me if I was selling these items, and wanted to know how much one would cost.  Others said I should post an article with photos and diagrams to the STX ARES group and submit them to QST for an article. 

I was given one excellent suggestion from Bob AD5NQ that instead of leaving my AC power strip loose and plugging the 30 amp DC power supply into it, I should make a mounting bracket to allow the strip to be mounted on the backside of the unit, so that other devices needing AC power could use it, rather than running the DC/AC converter all the time.  I’ll be incorporating that idea into the design, then I’ll take lots of photos and write it up as suggested.  Of course, regular readers to this blog already know most of what is included in this emergency ham radio go-kit, cause we started posting those photos as early as July 12th.

Gary K5GST, Joe W4CTH and myself popped up the road to Denny’s for quick lunch around noon, then returned in time for the drawing of the major door prizes (I didn’t win, and didn’t know any of those hams who did win), then headed off to the TX VHF FM Society meeting.

I attended a mild TX VHF FM Society meeting in the afternoon, about 150 members were present.   The Board presented a proposed budget, gave us the most recent updates to their RF Projector / Database project were presented by programmer / database designer Matthew Stennet K5RYN of Georgetown.  It was announced that New Mexico’s counterpart organization was joining in the project to see if RF Projector could be spread to cover both states and eliminate repeater coordination conflicts near those borders.  

One group of Hispanic hams from the Ft. Worth area made an appeal to expedite their efforts to obtain a coordinated repeater pair for spanish speaking hams.  They mentioned they already had 3 EchoLink simplex connections up and running in that area.   A good open dialog was established, and the frequency coordinator met with them during the election period to help them discuss forming a club and suggesting that perhaps an existing trustee with an underused or paper repeater might be approached to share with the newly formed club to provide this service to the ham community.

Elections were held to elect the five (5) director positions up for re-election, and to fill the two (2) vacancies caused by resignation and one death.   No additional nominations were made from the floor during the meeting, so only those 8 names who were on the electronic version ballot were on the paper ballot for in-person voting.  I didn’t hang around long enough to find out the results of the election, but I’m sure the TXVHFFM.org web site will soon have the results posted.

Directors election results: 7 seats were vacant, 5 were regular openings (in accordance with the bylaws) and 2 were to fill spots of Directors that resigned (1 director was deceased).

Five (5) elected for normal 2-year terms:

• Gerald Richmond,
• Mark Stennett,
• Craig Green,
• Louis Petit,
• George Csahanin

Two (2) elected / appointed for remainder (1 year) terms to fill vacancies:

• Larry Essary,
• Frank Hormann

The 2009 – 2010 Board is:

• Mark Stennet         – President
• Dave Davis            – Vice President
• Larry Essary         – Secretary
• Frank Hormann      – Treasurer
• George Csahanin  – News Editor
• Gerald Richmond  – Director at Large
• Tom Nevue           – Director at Large
• Craig Green          – Director at Large
• Louis Petit             – Director at Large

At the conclusion of this year’s Austin Summerfest, it would never be complete without a trip to the electronic superstore in town, Fry’s Electronics, out near Parmer Lane & Mopac, so Gary & I drove north to visit this store and see what sort of goodies they had on sale.  If you are in the market for 1tb hard drives for around $100, Fry’s is the place to find them, both external and internal at that price.

So now, without further rambling on my part, here are some of the photos I took.  I’m willing to also post photos provided by other hams if they send them to me as well.

Frank Hormann