Folks,<\/p>\n
Here is my “Rambling Ride Report” for the weekend [editor: Valero BikeMS Ride to the River on October 6-7th, 2018]. Please feel free to publish, conceal, distribute, fold, spindle, or mutilate as you see fit.<\/p>\n
Yours,<\/p>\n
Andy<\/p>\n
KE5PWX<\/p>\n
———————————————————–<\/p>\n
10\/08\/2018<\/p>\n
\n
2018 MS Ride to the River: A Backseat Ham Reports.<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n <\/b><\/span>Day 1: Saturday<\/b><\/p>\n At about 03:00 Saturday morning, I dragged my reluctant backside out of a nice warm bed, loaded some radio equipment, tools, and a few personal items into \u201cSmart Car 42,\u201d and set out for Rolling Oaks mall on the extreme Northeast side of San Antonio, Texas. If you asked me why, I’d have to say it’s complected. Sure, my company encourages me to do volunteer stuff. US Bank even matches cash donations to the organization at my hourly rate for events I participate in, but the biggest part is that my late father-in-law was a MS victim—a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair for half of his adult life—and that, and his daughter, my wife, was diagnosed with MS shortly after we were married 25 years ago. I’d like to say that those who participate in these events exemplify the indomitable spirits of my wife and her dad—accept, adapt, adjust, double-down, overcome—rinse, and repeat. <\/span><\/p>\n First thing Saturday, I discovered that while I know exactly where the mall is in the daytime, I have no idea where it is at 04:00 in the morning. <\/span><\/span>Fortunately I was able to illustrate one of the many valid reasons for having a ham radio in your car. <\/span><\/span>My dedicated GPS was not acting anything like ‘dedicated’, and it seemed like it would be more expedient to ask for directions than to fool with getting it on my phone; I posed my quandary to the good folks who happened to be monitoring the AARO repeater at that hour, and, Bob\u2019s your uncle, I had the name and exit number about two minutes before I needed it.<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n Rolling Oaks was the starting point for the Multiple Sclerosis Society\u2019s 2018 edition of its annual charity bicycling event. <\/span><\/span>I\u2019ve participated in about ten of these, starting with the first such event in its incarnation as the Valero MS 150 Bike to the Beach. Over the course, I\u2019ve played several roles as a volunteer; in fact, just about all of them except the Bicycle Rider role, but almost all of the other ones I’ve played as some sort of radio operator. This year, I completed the ham radio operator\u2019s checklist-of-roles by serving as a \u201cshadow\u201d—without a doubt, the coolest title; and to date my favorite volunteer ham gig of all. If the officials enjoyed it half as much as I did, it was a raging success.<\/p>\n Brief aside: due to my aforementioned \u2018reluctant backside,\u2019 I\u2019ll probably never do the bicycle thing. <\/span><\/span>Those who can and do the bicycle thing have nothing but my highest praise and admiration.<\/p>\n From an event management perspective, my experiences with these rides have ranged from \u2018smooth as silk\u2019 to \u2018unmitigated fiasco.\u2019 <\/span><\/span>I\u2019d evaluate this one to be somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, if not leaning a wee bit toward fiasco. <\/span><\/span>Then again, to be completely fair, I think the verdict on any such event has much more to do with the unforeseeable events and circumstances that always arise than with logistics acumen, or even lack thereof.<\/p>\n For this one there was <\/span>certainly<\/i> <\/i><\/span>no lack thereof. The official I was pared with demonstrated the uncommon combination of organizational skills and fluid adaptability that wins wars. Seriously, my official reminded me of a slightly taller and much more agile Napoleon. <\/span> <\/span>The only problem I had with her was keeping up. <\/span><\/span>I\u2019d say for my part, it was about 50% shadowing and 50% catching up with her.<\/p>\n For those who don’t know, shadowing is really two gigs. One mode of being a ham \u2018shadow\u2019 involves setting up your station in the back of a crew-cab pickup truck and passing traffic from one or both of the event officials in the front seat to net control and other event stations as the officials tour the route. The officials to whom I was assigned were a great combination of professional and fun and joining me in the back was the nephew of one of the officials who served as the muscle for our little adventure team. I often worry that the world is becoming too ‘serious,’ so it was refreshing to meet a <\/span>young<\/i> <\/i><\/span>man who shares my love of western novels and affection for dark humor.<\/p>\n Anyway, the other \u2018mode\u2019 of shadowing is when you are outside the truck at a rest stop or some other location where you must stay close enough to be handy when needed, but not so close that you\u2019re in the way. <\/span><\/span>If you don\u2019t have a good HT, you\u2019ll be about 50% useless as a shadow.<\/p>\n As I alluded to earlier, it was not always easy to keep up with my official. <\/span><\/span>I\u2019m a crack field tracker (no really), but she was spry and fleet of foot; while me? well—not so much these days I guess.<\/p>\n Another thing new to me in this role was someone dictating a series of traffic items for the net. My <\/span><\/span>official would invariably give me a set of four distinct items. I’m good for three items, but my mental buffer usually corrupts the first item as soon as it gets the fourth. <\/span><\/span>I had to start holding up a hand after the third item, close my eyes while I translated them into \u2018ham-ese\u201d, struggle to remember it all while waiting for NC to ack me, pass the traffic, then circle back with the official for remaining items. <\/span><\/span>I found this especially difficult in cases where I didn\u2019t comprehend the nature of the original traffic (like, what the hell do they want with pickle juice?) In most cases, the remaining items were no longer relevant by the time I circled back for them.<\/p>\n \u201cLogic is a little<\/i><\/b><\/font><\/span> <\/b><\/font><\/span>tweeting<\/b><\/font> <\/b><\/font><\/span><\/span>bird<\/i><\/b><\/font><\/span> <\/b><\/font><\/span>chirping in a meadow\u201d \u2013 LCDR Spock<\/b><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n On the technical side, my radio troubles on the first day turned out to be self-inflicted. I\u2019ll give a recapitulation in hopes that it will help others avoid a similar fate. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>About a week prior to the event, I had received the frequency list and programmed it into my HT as well as my Yaesu FTM-10 dual band mobile. The Yaesu? First; I LOVE this radio. <\/span><\/span>It used to be mounted on my beloved Honda Valkery (RIP), and it did hard-use duty on at least 6 charity rides when I was a motorcycle marshal. The only thing I don\u2019t like about it is it\u2019s a pain in the ass to program via software. <\/span><\/span>It\u2019s not easy to program manually either, but I\u2019ve found that\u2019s actually easier. <\/span><\/span>You just need to let go of linear-thought Western ideas about how the menu should be laid out, and embrace the more Eastern programming concept of joy being when and where you happen to find it. Free your mind. It helps to sit in the lotus position while programming a Yaesu.<\/p>\n The symptom of my issue was that at any point we were over 5 miles from the repeater, I would lose transmit. <\/span><\/span>I checked everything about ten times; transmission power, offset direction, PL tone\u2026 connections, antenna location and mount—you name it. <\/span><\/span>I checked it. The ride course hugs the Guadalupe river between Canyon Lake and New Braunufels, Texas. <\/span>It\u2019s a hilly topography, so I tried to put my troubles down to spotty coverage from the repeater—still, something seemed odd. Reception was about as skippy as normal, but transmit was a hard stop. They usually fall off together.<\/p>\n So, to restate the problem; if we were within 5 miles of the repeater I was getting full-quieting and net control reported me as <\/span><\/span>5X5, but when we got 6 or 7 miles out, I could not open the repeater; <\/span>my ears were on<\/span>, but my lips were sealed.<\/p>\n The answer came when we had stopped at the rest-stop furthest from the repeater, and on a whim, I keyed up on my Baofeng BF-F8HP at 8 watts. I wasn\u2019t expecting to open the repeater, but it did! <\/span><\/span>I think the officials I was with had already kind of given up on me, but at this very moment, one of them asked me to (among three other things) respond to an APB request for bread and pickle juice. (No, not kidding)<\/p>\n Surprisingly, NC copied the traffic and relayed it to the adjacent rest-stops. Team Tour 2 <\/span><\/span>wound up going on a special recon trip with the bread and pickle juice. On the way, I started comparing the setting between the functional HT and the gimpy mobile rig. <\/span><\/span>Ultimately, I discovered <\/b><\/span>the culprit was the PL tone<\/b>. <\/span><\/span>I had (somehow) set it to 136.5 instead of the 103.5 listed in the frequency document. <\/span><\/span>The little potato radio had 103.5 and was hitting the repeater like it could see it from there.<\/p>\n The reason this had passed my (at least four) previous checks was that \u2018136.5\u2019 looked about right,and it DID WORK if I was close to the repeater.<\/i><\/b><\/font> <\/i><\/b><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b><\/font> <\/i><\/b><\/font><\/span>I<\/b><\/font> <\/span>had always assumed PL tone activation was more of a digital proposition, it would either work or it wouldn\u2019t. <\/span><\/span>Nope! <\/span><\/span>Turns out that the incorrect PL tone <\/span>might<\/i> <\/i><\/span>\u2018sorta work\u2019—sometimes.<\/p>\n After setting the mobile rig\u2019s PL to the stipulated tone, I was able to make contacts from the very same locations that I had thought were \u2018dead spots.\u2019<\/p>\n Unfortunately, I had had enough time to do a fair amount of thrashing between the time I started having trouble, and the time I finally defeated my own confirmation bias enough to acknowledge the <\/span> <\/span>actual problem. <\/span><\/span>Said thrashing included begging SAG 1 and other hams for an antenna (I\u2019d been convinced that my antenna was the problem) —asking if other hams were having issues, rebooting all the things and marking \u2018dead spots\u2019 on the map. <\/span><\/span>At some point, I asked one of the \u2018first-responder\u2019 guys about coverage and ran into the eternal ham vs. commercial radio debate. <\/span><\/span>To be fair, the guy understood and acknowledged all the subtleties of the age-old controversy, but I realized I wasn\u2019t helping the ham side at all at that point so I just kind of shut up. Proverbs 17:28.<\/p>\n Forgive yet another digression, but I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s not just me. If we hams could be honest with ourselves, this isn\u2019t an uncommon thing. <\/span><\/span>Many of us make this sort of mistake. <\/span><\/span>Many more of us show up on race day with shielding problems (I\u2019m looking at you motor marshals), faulty equipment, and\/or little if any knowledge of net discipline or protocol. <\/span>I can say this as a shame filled repeat offender; o<\/span>n my very first ride, I reported for duty with a spark-plug pumping so much RFI that I sounded like a jackhammer every time I hit the key. One of the most important stations at <\/span>this<\/i> <\/i><\/span>event had an equipment issue that rendered his traffic nigh on to unintelligible. If we expect to be of service during these events, it is imperative that we address these issues individually and as a group. Get your kit to together!<\/p>\n On the positive side, and to showcase a point I\u2019ll make in the \u2018unsolicited advice\u2019 list below, we wrapped up day one with what I think is a great \u2018ham story.\u2019 <\/span><\/span>One of the riders had lost a \u2018bike bag\u2019 with his wallet in it. <\/span><\/span>He didn\u2019t know what SAG he had been on, and at first, none of the SAGs could confirm leaving the fairgrounds in the time-frame the rider was dropped. <\/span><\/span>After a few minutes passed, SAG #5 reported that they had just left and would conduct a thorough search the van. <\/span><\/span>When the report came back negative, we put out a general BOLO type announcement for it. <\/span><\/p>\n About an hour later, SAG 5 reported that a subsequent search had turned up the bag! <\/span><\/span>I —(completely coincidentally)— found the owner at the beer tent —(completely coincidentally)—, where, without his ID, he was at that time being denied the privilege of beer. <\/span><\/span>I radioed into NC for permission to contact SAG5 for an ETA, and when granted, I also informed SAG5 that the owner was unable to obtain beer without his ID and therefore at substantial risk of malnutrition. <\/span><\/span>After what I\u2019m sure seemed like an eternity to the poor deprived owner, I was finally able to conduct him to a rendezvous point and facilitate the happy reunion. Sure, it seems trivial in the larger scope of curing multiple sclerosis, but this is <\/span>just one<\/i> <\/span>of the hundreds of little stories that make it all seem worthwhile to me.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Day 2: Sunday<\/b><\/p>\n In order to avoid driving back and forth between New Braunfels and Grey Forest, I had thought about camping out at the overnight location with the bicycle riders, but then I remembered that I\u2019m old. <\/span><\/span>These days, my idea of camping is staying in a hotel without a concierge. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n On Saturday, I\u2019d left my car at the starting line, and hitched a ride back with a ham that was headed that direction—thereby demonstrating yet another reason to never be without a ham radio. <\/span><\/p>\n Sunday, I drove out to the Comal county fairgrounds, aka, starting-point, aka, finish-line. I intended to meet my official at 05:00, but since I\u2019d started out at 04:00 and had not consumed enough coffee, I had to bumble around a bit in New Braunfels before I got there at ~05:30. <\/span><\/span>It turned out that we weren\u2019t leaving the fairgrounds until the last rider was out so I just hung out and drank (oddly bitter) Starbucks coffee and crashed the MS official’s morning meeting. <\/span><\/span>They were getting conflicting forecast from NWS, and I was getting yet another conflicting report from NOAA. I didn’t volunteer mine because <\/span><\/span>from the combined reports, it seemed like the weather was going to be anywhere from \u2018mild to partly cloudy\u2019 and \u2018biblical flood.\u2019 <\/span><\/span>It turned out to be somewhere between those, but close enough to the flood side of the spectrum to eventually warrant calling the event. <\/span><\/span>More on that later.<\/p>\n At some point early on, one of my officials commented on the sparse radio traffic. <\/span><\/span>While I\u2019d confirmed that setting the right PL tone had resolved 100% of my radio problems, I think she still lacked confidence. <\/span><\/span>The primary official said she was <\/span><\/span>grateful for it being slow, but correctly premonished that things could change.<\/p>\n And change they did. <\/span><\/span>At what I\u2019d estimate to be a little more than the half-way point of the event \u2013 a line of thunderstorms started to train up exactly over River Road—the main path the riders were on. <\/span><\/span>After visiting all the rest stops and relocating some more bread and pickle juice, the Tour 2 team had returned to the fairgrounds. I should have recorded times better; I didn\u2019t, but I \u2018feel like\u2019 this was around 11:00 ish. <\/span><\/span>Things started happening pretty fast. <\/span>By this time, a<\/span>ll the forecasts had reached consensus; heavy rain. Yet they still all seemed to draw up short of the wind and driving rain that had suddenly pinned us down and sent us scurrying for shelter. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I had stayed under the large pavilion while my official had walked a short distance to get some lunch. <\/span><\/span>After the sudden surprise super soaker, she looked a lot like a nearly drowned kid I once fished out of a bar-ditch after a tornado—but unlike that kid, she was kind of grinning—a weird unsettling grin—like the one hockey players get after they are punched in the face a few times. Truth told—I was a little worried—but to no cause. I think she was just enjoying the kind of positive activation that only rare people like her get in challenging situations like the one we found ourselves in. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Having mistakenly had the impression that the worst was over, none of the rest of us had a poncho and we had also got a pretty good drenching before we could get back under cover. <\/span><\/span>As we met up under the big pavilion roof, a sudden gust of wind blew over some tables and caused about 75 people to simultaneously utter that involuntary \u201cwohhh\u201d sound that nobody wants to hear at a group charity event. <\/span><\/span>Just then, NWS reported lightning strikes within five miles of one of the rest stops, and quick as a whip, my official made the decision to call the event. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I asked net to issue \u2018QST\u2019 (general call to all stations) informing them of the decision and instructing all rest-stops to hold their riders for pick up. My <\/span><\/span>official sent a school bus out to the furthest rest-stop, and had the SAG vans and trucks start looping the course to collect riders.<\/span><\/p>\n About an hour later we had all riders off the course. <\/span><\/span>It may sound kind of hectic, but it was really impressive. <\/span><\/span>All hands accounted for in under two hours? <\/span><\/span>Pffft! <\/span><\/span>I\u2019m hard pressed to pull that off during a routine family trip to an amusement park. <\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, back at the fairgrounds, I\u2019d made my way back to the truck to get the rain poncho I should never have left in the truck in the first place—at almost the exact time that the rain really stopped and I no longer needed it. <\/span><\/span>I caught up with my official who had somehow wound up trapped between two small rivers of run-off holding a tandem bike for someone. <\/span><\/span>I took temporary custody of the thing so she could attend to what were ostensibly more important duties.<\/span><\/p>\n As I stood in the light drizzle reflecting on all that had transpired during the event while holding a tandem bicycle for reasons I didn\u2019t quite understand the whole thing took on a kind of surrealistic aspect. I considered what I might like to remember, and what I might like to share in this write-up. <\/span><\/span>I kind of panicked for a moment when I realized I had always been a little off the beam on this one. <\/span><\/span>I hadn\u2019t really made an effort to record or remember anything. <\/span><\/span>I had only taken about ten pics, and those were of the Tour 2 Adventure Team sweeping gravel out of an intersection; none of them are share-worthy. <\/span><\/span>I pulled out my notepad and made the one single journalistic entry for this event.<\/span><\/p>\n