Local radio operators manned the radio station inside the National Weather Service office in New Braunfels, TX from 6pm Friday (Dec. 5th) thru 6pm Saturday (Dec. 6th) in two hour shifts.
I’ll update this report once I receive more details, but my wife (Pat Knight AD5BR) and I (Lee Besing N5NTG) were there Friday from 6pm – 10:30pm, along with J.C. Smith N5RXS, Lew Archer KD5MSW, Bob Hejl W2IK and visitation from Danny McCarty WA5KRP and Chuck Kenworthy WB5FWI.
J.C. N5RXS started out the operations by tagging onto the end of the Arkansas Razorback Net on HF, telling the Net Control what he was doing tonight and asking that stations interested in talking with this NWS stay on frequency afterward. The calls stacked. Then he moved over to the Texas Traffic Net and repeated that technique. He quickly filled up almost 4 pages of log sheets, with 14 contacts per sheet.
Then comes Bob W2IK. The reluctant Bob. Pat AD5BR talked him into getting on the radio after he first resisted the idea, and he quickly filled up about 3 sheets of contacts in about 45 minutes. This guy knows how to work a contest, even when it wasn’t really a “contest per se”. He staked out a heavily used area on the HF band, started talking, and started logging contact after contact.
I got on EchoLink with my laptop (using a cellphone modem card) after a rather slow start this evening. (Note to self – test this stuff before you need to use it!) First, I had apparently left my headset at home because they weren’t in my laptop’s case, so I activated plan B and configured my bluetooth headset from my cell phone to work (for the first time), because inside the NWS we needed to use headsets to control the noise factor. Then I discovered that my version of EchoLink needed updated. So after I finally got all the software upgraded, all the hard working together, and downloaded a list of registered NWS stations who said they planned to be on EchoLink or IRLP, I got on EchoLink. And I found out most stations who said they would be on EchoLink, lied. But in the short time I had left before my shift ended around 10PM, I filled up a sheet of contacts with mostly 100% NWS stations, which helped us with our points ranking. We got points for each NWS contact we made, not just normal ham stations.
I believe that Paul Yura, KI4DVO, the new Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the New Braunfels NWS, planned to send out QSL cards to stations who sent in stamped self addressed envelopes with a request to the address shown (on www.QRZ.com) for KD5UMW. Since Paul just started here last spring, this was the first NWS Skywarn Day in Texas for him, and he was determined to roll out the proverbial red carpet for the local hams to operate radios on a 24 hour basis this year and see how many contacts we could rack up.
Here is the map showing where the NWS is located, click for larger view.
Here is a quote from Paul Yura after the event was concluded…
Thank you so much for coming out to the office and help with the 2008 Skywarn Recognition Day.
We had a total of 17 people come out and work the radios…a tremendous number of people. A special thank you to Eddie Kovelan who had all the equipment working and even added a few new toys toward the end. Everybody should be able to play with them next year.
I added up the contacts and you made 167 contacts. That basically equaled the total of the last 4 years combined! Great job. We basically had 24 hour coverage…and thank you Lyle Meek and Patrick Howard for pulling those late night hours.
Again a thousand Thank You’s. I am always up for ideas of how to improve. I realize I dropped the ball in having some snacks and drinks for everybody…That wont happen again. J C provided a great log for everybody to use. Any other ideas for improvement? I have already talked to Eddie about the need for a rotor motor on the directional antennae and hopefully our office can purchase one shortly. Please pass along any other ideas to me.
Paul Yura
Warning Coordination Meteorologist
National Weather Service Austin-San Antonio TX
Here is the list of the names and call signs for 18 hams, compiled based on the various email messages sent prior to, or following this year’s event:
- Paul Yura, KI4DVO – Meteorologist
- J.C. Smith, N5RXS
- Lee Besing, N5NTG
- Pat Knight, AD5BR
- Lewis Archer, KD5MSW
- Bob Hejl, W2IK
- Louis Upton, K1STX
- Lyle Meek, W6WF
- Patrick Howard, KE5KCE
- Jeremy Davenport, KE5ELI
- Herm Haertel, N5CNH
- Bob Rodriguez, K5AUW
- Dale Robinson, KB5YSJ
- Linda Robinson, KC5QPQ
- Eddie Kovelan, KD5WDQ
- Danny McCarty, WA5KRP
- Chuck Kenworthey, WB5FWI
- Dwight Compton, N5TCS
