Back in May, I went to my first Hamvention, the largest ham radio convention in the world, held in Xenia, Ohio. I was originally planning on going in 2020 with Jim, KB1KQW, as we were discussing at that year's Boston Marathon training but then COVID happened.
I flew out of Boston Logan on May 19th with Jim to Columbus, Ohio, where we met up with former Massachusetts native Carl, N1FY, who had settled down there after traveling the world until COVID struck.
From there, we drove to Dayton and checked into a Doubletree hotel in Miamisburg, Ohio. Then the next day it was off to Hamvention!
There I was inducted into SLARC among other things, met some new people and came across those I knew. I also got to tour DARA's clubhouse!
All in all, a good time. We left on Sunday and drove back to Columbus, spent the night at Carl's and flew back home the next morning.
Sorry, for the delayed post, just been busy with work.
It's back! The Marathon is back! At last, we had a Marathon on Patriots' Day again! Although, COVID is by no means gone, it felt good to be back to somewhat normal. Speaking of COVID, this year all Marathon volunteers had to be vaccinated.
Anyways, this year I once again provided communications for a medical tent. In fact, the same medical tent as last year although with a different team, well actually, more like the some of the same team as I had in 2019.
This year was mostly uneventful, and I had a competent ham partner this time around. The last two times left something to be desired.
Yours truly participating in Winter Field Day. (Photo: N3JEC)
I've participated in the ARRL's Field Day for the past couple of years, but never Winter Field Day until this past weekend.
Held at Nockamixon State Park in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, this Winter Field Day operation was done under the aegis of the Young Amateurs Radio Club (YARC) of which I am a member, and was overseen by Charlie, K3NOP who coordinated the whole event.
I left Massachusetts Friday morning and after a 5 hour drive, arrived in the late afternoon at the park. I helped to set up antennas as soon as I arrived. While the even didn't start till 2pm EDT the next day, I got up at 2am after failing to fall asleep and was joined by N3JEC with our respective FT-991As and started playing radio early.
W1PAC and N3JEC playing radio at 2am in the morning.
The next day the contest got underway and we were off and running doing digital and voice as a 4 India station. At some points we had 3 operators at operating at the same time. There were also technical glitches at times, such as stepping on each other when transmitting resulting in one or multiple radios getting a lot of noise on HF.
Also, we weren't the only hams in the park, it turns out, that another group was at the other end of the cabin area playing around. We happened by chance upon them when we heard my Anytone 868 which had one of the VFOs set to 146.52 simplex and heard someone calling out! We invited them down to check out our cabin at some point, which they did. We also invited other Philly areas hams to join us of which only a few did, mostly because of the snowstorm (which was a blizzard here back in Massachusetts) left the roads a little less to be desired.
Not only did we have radios operating, but we held a Volunteer Examiner session that anyone could attend. We had at least one person upgrade to Extra! Congrats KC3SAI!
Anyways, I had an awesome time, and I hope to do it again next year! Here's the list of operators:
K3NOP, Charlie
WX0A, Amelia
N3JEC, Johnathan
W1PAC, Patrick
KC3SAI, Sean
Also in attendance and a great help were:
AJ3DI, Jim
K3CL, Charlie
W4KEK, Grant
N1LC, Lamonte
W4GMN, Dan
Lastly, YARC had a claimed score of 4,020. Let's see what the final results say!
Well, it took a year and half, and it wasn't in April on Patriots' Day but the Boston Marathon is finally back in person, after last year's "virtual" Marathon due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In my 3rd year of service to the Marathon, I was stationed at the same Medical tent as 2019, Medical Tent 6. To be a medical tent volunteer at this tent, you had to be vaccinated against COVID-19, no exceptions. Hydration stations also checked in at the tent and were tested for COVID if they weren't vaccinated. There was also no meetup at Babson College or Newton North High School this year. Although, our convoy of hams including the Course Coordinator, Jim Palmer, KB1KQW, enlisted me to help do some last minute preparations at Babson involving getting jackets ready.
Although, it was in a different location than last year and that caused me some headache as it appeared to be a last minute change that wasn't properly communicated, leading to me searching and calling on my net control channel to find it. Turns out it was moved down the road a bit next to Wellesley College.
Which was fun because it was just a bit down the road from the famous Wellesley "Scream Tunnel." What wasn't fun was the porta-potties weren't close to the station, which required a small hike, maybe a quarter of a mile, from the medical tent to the porta-potties which was inconvenient for me and everyone else at the tent. For me, it was because I would be out of earshot of the station staff if something needed to be relayed back or forth. And at one point, the doctor assigned had gone to use the bathroom when our first patient of the day showed up and her presence was required.
Other issues cropped up, such as missing supplies which required to requisition some supplies from another medical tent which had supplies to spare after talking with the ham at the next tent down.
Another issue was of my own doing, that being, I kept my radio attached to my hip all day instead of getting it off my hip and up in the air for better signal coverage. There were times were I didn't hit the repeater well and that probably could have been solved by getting the radio off my hip.
Also, there was issues with the sweep buses at some points as there was one sitting at my station for a quite a while but that was mostly due to only having one runner who dropped out on board and apparently the sweep bus will only move when there's a certain number. Eventually, the station captain had me advocate on her behalf and the bus finally took off.
But not all was bad, I helped to relay a call from our Division Supervisor to the Team Lead about a down runner a tenth of a mile from our station. Although, it did require some more transmissions to find out which part of the course they were on.
But it felt great to relay that message, as it shows that we're still relevant in providing public service to our partners.
After my shift was done at my tent which was around 3:00pm, I made my way over to the Course Net Control Operations Center is and helped out there, it was my first time visiting Course NCOC in the years I've volunteered and it was great to see what was going on the other end of the radio behind the scenes.
All in all, I had a good time, despite the differences this year due to the pandemic and I'm looking forward to going back in six months when the 126th Boston Marathon happens on it's regularly scheduled day. But now, it's time to prepare for NEAR-Fest and the Head of the Charles Regatta!
Yes, I know. It's been a while since I posted, just under a year. Unfortunately, as we all know, 2020 is not a normal year.
Aside from attending the amateur radio training session for the 2020 Boston Marathon, the Marathon was delayed until September and ultimately cancelled and replaced with a virtual event. The same goes for the 2020 Head of the Charles Regatta.
I was planning on going to my first Hamvention, but that too was cancelled. As was the May and October editions of NEAR-Fest. My last hope for some ham action was the Northeast HamXposition, but alas, it was also cancelled. As have all the monthly MIT Fleas for the year.
It's not all bad though, we've still had NSRA meetings via Zoom and continued them into summer, which usually is a break period for the club. Also, there have been virtual ham expos and fests online, such as the QSO Today Ham Expo and the HamXposition is going virtual too.
I just recently got back from a 3 month work deployment on Nantucket, I didn't really use their repeater much to do be being busy with work and mic shyness, but it was good nonetheless, and I did do alot of shortwave listening while I was there. I did manage to check in the NSRA's Sunday Night Net via Echolink a lot.
Now that I got back home, I turned my virtual scanner back on, which I've migrated to a Raspberry Pi 4 because of Wi-Fi issues with the Lenovo ThinkCentre.
But that's been my year in ham and radio in general in a nutshell.
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
As the Scout Motto goes, BE PREPARED. The Boston Marathon is probably the preeminent public service event in all of amateur radio. (My opinion, of course.) Mind you, the course spreads over 26.2 miles from Hopkinton, Massachusetts to Boston, Massachusetts.
You need to be prepared in various ways.
1. Make sure your radio is programmed beforehand. Whether you have a top of the line Kenwood or a bottom of the barrel Baofeng or somewhere in between, make sure it is programmed with the various repeater and simplex frequencies before the event. Make sure you have the offsets and tones correct also. You don't want to be hand punching in frequencies and tones on the front panel at the volunteer meetup, it wastes valuable time. You may get lucky and have another ham with a programming cable for your radio or you may not.
The ICS-205 form with all the frequencies and tones. is usually released a few weeks beforehand on hamradioboston.org, so check it out and start programming. Usually, one of the hams will release a CSV which you can load in the radio programming Swiss army knife of a program known as CHIRP or whatever software you use to program your radio. Take advantage of it. In closing, I'll say it again, make sure your radio is programmed beforehand.
2. Make sure you have adequate radio accessories. What do I mean by adequate? You should have the following:
A headset and shoulder mic. The Marathon is a very loud event, you're going to have lots of cheering spectators yelling, screaming and ringing cowbells and the lot. You need to be able to hear your radio and what others are saying.
Extra power. Depending on your assignment you could be on your station for a couple of hours up to dozens of hours, your battery may not make it all the way, so bring a fully charged back up battery. Or better yet...
Extra radio. Bring a backup just in case something happens with your primary, if your radio goes down and you don't have a backup, you're essentially useless.
No stock antennas. An aftermarket antenna for your radio is highly recommended. Stock "rubber duckies" are a compromise, they work well when you're near a good, strong repeater, but you may not have that luxury on the course due to coverage or a weak spot. So go and get one.
3. Dress for the weather. Even though Spring begins every year on March 20th, New England weather is a strange beast in April. It could 32°F and snowing, it could 50°F and raining or it could be 85°F with sweltering heat and humidity. You need to dress for the weather. Take it from me, I learned the hard way my first year when it was a monsoon of freezing rain, I just wore cargo pants and non waterproof boots, with a fleece jacket underneath my volunteer jacket along with a poncho. My upper half stayed warm and dry, the lower half did not and my boots got ruined. Dress for the weather.
4. Pack light. 2013 changed everything. The days of any type of backpack are over, unless it's see through. Bring a small waist pack and carry as much as you can on your person, cargo pants are highly recommended. If you bring a backpack, you're liable to be searched or stopped by local law enforcement which takes away from your listening watch. The only slight exception is if your doing transport on the medical sweep bus, because a mobile radio with a mag mount is recommended for those assignments. Nevertheless, transport buses could be boarded and searched so be prepared for that and cooperate with law enforcement. Pack light.
5. Read the documentation. Even with all my advice, this is not official guidance. Everything official is posted on hamradioboston.org, by the BAA Communications Committee staffed by fellow amateurs. Everything you need is there. Plus, there is a forum where you can ask questions. I highly recommend checking it out.
In closing
Again, these are just tips. The official documentation is what you should rely on. Nevertheless, don't be daunted by all this. Step up and make yourself available. The Boston Marathon is an exciting event and helps you get baseline of what amateur radio public service is all about, and what better way then on the biggest stage of them all.
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.
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
All in all, a great time, a great Marathon and I hope to return next year and do it all over again. But maybe sit down a bit more because my legs and body were gassed by the time I got home... and I didn't even run! But I did sleep like a baby.
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.
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