Note: This was supposed to be published in the November issue of The SPARC, the Boston Amateur Radio Club newsletter, however, due to unforeseen circumstances, it was never published, so here it is for the first time in print! 

It was a busy public service month for me. First off was MassJam 2023, the multi-state scout jamboree that is held every five years at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds in Falmouth.

While the communication staff was made up of entirely of hams, the event did not use amateur radio for its operation as obviously, while there are hams in Scouting, not everyone is a ham and therefore, commercial band radio was a must for the event. Using radios provided by DC Rentals (who seem to provide the commercial radios for practically every large event in Boston) MassJam got underway. Net control was a 24/7 operation with shifts scheduled in blocks and food for the net controllers was cooked on site. Despite some hiccups, the event itself was mostly successful, including exodus from the campground was went really well and finished practically on schedule.

After a week and a half off, it was time for the next major public service event, the 2023 Head of the Charles Regatta. I was stationed all 3 days at the Attager (which is Regatta spelled backwards) Row First Aid tent. A ham’s job at the regatta is to be the primary link for the first aid tents to net control and from there to the event’s roving bike teams on commercial radio (again, provided by DC Rentals) and if needed to our public safety partners such as the Massachusetts State Police (who provide their command post for the weekend where a ham is stationed as a link between net control and them), Boston EMS and Cambridge Fire. Joined by a rotating motley crew of hams, including our very own public service chair, Ethan KC1OIP, we made the best of it despite pouring rain on Saturday and cold winds on Sunday.

All in all, a good month of public service. I recommend the Regatta as a good place to start if you’re interested in the public service side of this great hobby. Now to look forward to next year’s public service season with the Boston Marathon!

There's one thing I forgot to mention during my 2020 update. And it's important one at that.

The hole in the wall that was drilled to properly snake the cable through the junction box below.

The Slinktenna hung up behind an old TV antenna.

I've participated in the Boston Marathon for the past two years and here's some survival tips for new hams. This is inspired by W3ATB's original Survival Guide. (Although it should be noted that the guide has been superseded by newer documentation.)

Be prepared

Yesterday, I participated in the 123rd running of the Boston Marathon. Not as a runner mind you, but as a volunteer; specifically an amateur radio communications volunteer. Amateur radio is one of the three radio systems going during the Marathon, operating along aside public safety radios that are interoperable for the event and the commercial DMR radios that the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), the race organizers, have rented for the duration of the event.

There are various roles amateurs play at the Marathon and it is divided into four segments, Start, Course, Finish and Transport. Start and Finish work obviously the start and finish line. Course, which was the segment I was assigned to, is split among the hydration and medical stations along the course and Transport works the sweep buses to pick up runners who have dropped out. Course and Finish also have Net Control Operation Centers that serve as the focal point of relaying operations for their respective segments.

There are also amateur radio operators assigned to other roles such as shadowing VIP race officials to provide information and there is even a ham or two assigned to the MEMA Bunker in Framingham.

Most of this came about due to the after effects of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The BAA setup a Communications Committee which created standard operating procedures for hams to make everything more organized.

The sheer amount of volunteers makes this one of the biggest, if not the biggest ham radio public service event. One of my fellow hams from reddit who contacted me for help said he was amazed the amount of ham radio volunteers alone, not to mention the medical and hydration volunteers needed.

The race

Last year, was my first year and I was assigned to a hydration station in Wellesley's College Sqaure, where I promptly got soaked in a monsoon of freezing rain, but at least I had convenient parking to park in the parking lot of the library right there and duck into my car from time to time.

This year I wasn't so lucky parking wise, as I was on a side street due to the station being located on the Natick/Wellesley line. However, it was a medical station, which means a bit more shelter should the rain come pouring down.

It did, but only before the race began, a thunderstorm came plowing through leading to us being held at our volunteer meeting location of Babson College's auditorium. The same went for other volunteers down the course who were held at Newton North High School. Luckily, the storm passed and the all clear was given to proceed out.

Current conditions at the @babson volunteer meeting point. #bostonmarathon2019 pic.twitter.com/Lm6QX4EU4u

— 📡Patrick ⚡ W1PAC📻 (@W1PAC) April 15, 2019

The race began, and other than having some radio trouble with my partner not being able to hit the repeater, it was mostly uneventful for the first couple of hours as the wheelchair runners came through followed by the elite men and women and eventually the first waves of regular runners.

One of our main jobs was to report the hour stats of how many runners are being treated which was thankfully zero, so the medical staff mostly handed out water and Vaseline on sticks for the runners, some of whom had to be reminded it was Vaseline and not to eat it. (My opinion is I think some of the runners mistook it for energy gel which was also being handed out.)

However, towards the end of the race, we started to see runners coming in with various ailments, some minor but some major. I started getting reports from the hydration stations from the east and west of me that we had runners in distress who couldn't make it the medical station and required pick up. I relayed this information to medical station lead who had a Gator cart dispatched to each location to pick up the runners.

Thankfully, that was the most excitement I had as one of the other fallback tasks an amateur radio operator has at a medical station is to make EMS requests should all other methods of requesting help fail.

My only major gripe is the location of the station as their is a minor radio dead zone where I am because while I could receive net control, it was very hard to hear the hydration stations next to me with many garbled transmissions until they could into a clearer area.

Conclusion

Back in January, I posted about silent key ham W1OCY and his trove of old ham radio items plus other odds and ends that went undiscovered for 8-9 years in a warehouse in Peabody, Massachusetts.

I missed out on our club's February meeting due to work commitments, but got an update at our club's March meeting.

At the time, we hadn't sold anything, but now I can report, that we've sold a lot of stuff and made a nice profit for the club, which is important because we just installed a UHF DMR repeater through the New England Digital Emergency Communications Network (NEDECN).

We're still not done, I have still have some of the books in storage as do others. If you need more information or are just interested, email me here.

W1OCY, Everett E. Chapman, is a silent key. He died in 2010, just two days shy of the new year at the age of 85. He was born on April 30, 1925 in Glen Cove, NY and grew up in Vermont and New Hampshire.

He served his country in the United States Navy during World War II and was part of the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Dartmouth College. He was at least an Ensign based on items we found in this "treasure." I don't know if he reached any higher ranks, I've tried searching through US Navy Registers online and so far, I haven't found anything.

He graduated from Dartmouth in 1948 with an A.B. and entered the business world in 1955 working for Dynatrol and other places in the aerospace industry such as Raytheon based on his collection of papers we found.

He didn't have much family, didn't marry, at least from what I can tell and obviously no kids. He was survived by brother Donald, who is still alive and will turn 90 on April Fools' Day this year.

He was an Extra-class ham. In fact, his license just expired in May, but hasn't been cancelled because no one has brought his passing to the FCC's attention yet.

And it seems that's how this "treasure" trove of old ham radio equipment and books went undiscovered for nearly 8 years before it was found.

I am member of the North Shore Radio Association, and it appears maybe at one time, so was Mr. Chapman based on a empty binder that was found with a tab labeled North Shore Repeater Association, the club's old name.

Anyways, one of club members, Jim Palmer, KB1KQW, works for Peabody, Massachusetts' public access cable station, Peabody Access Telecommunications/Peabody TV. PAT is based in an old industrial park, known as the Foster St. Complex, located next to the Eastman Gelatine plant.

Jim was asked by the landlord to take a look at stash of old radio equipment found in one of the adjacent buildings.

What was found could be nothing short of "hidden treasure."

W1OCY had tubes galore, old radios that are older than most of us, homebrew equipment and books, books galore. I was told it was on six pallets, but it was managed to get condensed down into four pallets.

I've only taken a brief look at the radios as so far my only night helping (due to my work schedule) was sorting the books.

Everett was an interesting and eclectic ham, suffice to say. He had many, many books on amateur radio and electronics, but also books on the Civil War, military uniforms, military horse saddles, military belt buckles, woodworking, machining, model trains and various types of engines. Not to mention the piles and piles of periodicals such as Science and Mechanics and good ole' Popular Mechanics.

So what do we plan to do with this "treasure"?

Auction it and sell it and raise funds for the club. We plan to list some of the stuff on eBay, we also plan on hitting up the local ham fests and fleas to sell it such as NEAR-Fest and Boxboro, the ARRL New England convention. I suggested the Flea at MIT. Some stuff will probably be bought to Hamcation and Hamvention too.

UPDATE: We've sold some of the items, click here for more information.

It's been quiet here, I know. Though, not like my blog is highly trafficked in the first place. Anyways,

I purchased a TYT MD-2017 a week after I wrote the last post. I followed that up with a ZUMspot hotspot I ordered from HRO to get into the world of DMR.

Then using the hotspot kinda fell by the wayside, since I was having trouble getting it to work.

Then I used said TYT MD-2017 in analog only, supporting the 2018/122nd Boston Marathon on only 3 hours sleep. (More about that in another post.)

However, this has been a busy week for my by far. First, I purchased an Anytone AT-D868UV as part of a group purchase from the local ham club. I tried it down on Nahant Beach and was able to get in the Boston DMR repeater. (It helps that you can see the Boston skyline from Nahant, which is were the repeater is.)

Then, I got a text from a co-worker. His grandfather, who is a ham, was going into a nursing home. He nor anyone else in the family is a ham, so they had to decide what to do with his equipment. They offered me to took a look and I ended up with an Yaesu FT-900 plus a power supply and antenna for only $525.

He also has other radios which the family wants my help in selling.

And finally, I got the ZUMspot working right!

So all in all, a good week!

I have long had an interest in radio, whether it be broadcast, public safety or amateur.

Besides listening to regular AM/FM radio, what got me down this road first started with listening to shortwave radio back in 2009 when I was 19. I started with a Grundig GM300PE Mini World that I bought at local Radio Shack because it was all I could afford. I also bought a copy of the Passport to World Band Radio for that year, which turned out to be last. Even though the book was discontinued, my passion for radio hadn't and I kept listening.

By 2015, I was studying for a Technician license using the ARRL Technician study guide. But, despite my efforts and using the ARRL test prep site I felt I wasn't getting it.

I lapsed for a year in 2016 and in mid-2017 after buying my first digital scanner and first scanner in years, the bug bit again and I buckled down this time. Working for TSA for almost 9 years at this point was another one of my reasons for getting my amateur radio license as we use MARS for EMCOMM purposes at work.

I bought KB6NU's No Nonsense study guides, practiced using HamStudy.org and felt ready!

I took my Technician test on July 22, 2017 through the North Shore Radio Association which I passed and received my first callsign, KC1HXT, on August 02, 2017. Then I was issued W1PAC on August 22, 2017 as my vanity.

And that's my story so far.

1. Work and Time: I've worked an odd schedule for the past half year, working from 1700 to 0130. As many hams are driving home, I'm driving to work. It doesn't give me much time to talk as most non-retired hams are in the middle of their work day when I'm just waking up. Plus while working I obviously I can't talk on my radio. 


2. Location: I live in Lynn, Massachusetts. Lynn has odd geography, it's flat near the ocean and the Saugus River, but other parts of the city are very hilly. I happen to live in the hilly section. The only problem, the slight hill I'm on is surrounded by taller hills, so in essence, I'm a valley. My club's main repeater is located in Danvers. Which while only separated by another city is about 10 miles. As VHF and UHF radio is line of sight, it has to traverse those hills to reach the repeater. I can receive the repeater just fine on my Yaesu VX-6R, but transmitting is another story. I've listened to myself via Echolink on the repeater and I've heard nothing but static on Echolink despite kerchunking the repeater with my Yaesu, and this is with an upgraded Diamond SRH320A as the antenna.


3. No Local Repater: Lynn has a couple repeaters according to the New England Repeater Directory, RFinder, RepeaterBook and even the New England Spectrum Management Council, the repeater coordinators themselves. There's only one problem, they're offline according to a couple of sources and have been since before I got my license. This would make it a lot more easier to talk since I'm right down the road from the repeater and would have no issues, that is unless.


4. Repeaters Are Dead: Some of the repeaters are just dead. D-E-A-D. Not all of them, but a good majority of the day, which plays into issue #1. Some are active, but again, they're usually active when I'm at work, or they're out of transmitting range.