Neches River Rendezvous
June 5, 2004
DETARC members and other area Amateur Operators once again supported this event for 2004. It was lot of fun and a great way to test equipment and operating capabilities. Here's more information on how things went:
Note from Mike Miles/WD5EFY, Event Coordinator
NRR-04 WRAPUP COMMENTS / INFORMATION
Once again, the Neches River Rendezvous has come and gone and once again – it was a huge success!
I want to personally thank each one of you for an excellent job in providing communications, time, equipment, expertise and FUN to this annual event !!! A special note of thanks to our neighbors to the north AND south for helping out. This simply could not have been done without the help of the Nacogdoches area group and the Livingston area group....THANKS for your help !!Again this year, WE did it and it was a roaring success, thanks to each of you that participated or loaned equipment or offered ideas and suggestions.
APRS got off to a bit of a bumpy start but within 30-45 minutes we were tracking all 4 vans that were equipped. It was very beneficial to Net Control to be able tosee the vans and reduced the amount of traffic for NC. All the APRS stations tracked for the entire route and communications and APRS was solid using simplex, even with the boats in the river. All of the trackers were also being logged by the Lonestar Club's digipeater and put through the Igate to the Internet for posting on servers like findu.com.
Again, my hat's off to each of you.
Great job everyone !
Some stats just for trivia's sake…
There were 136 canoes or kayaks participating
There were 282 participants this year, both setting a record for vessels and people!
There were 96+ pieces of information / traffic passed
There were 13 mobile radios used, with a couple on hand for spares
There were 12 mag-mount antennas used with one spare
There were 4 complete, portable APRS trackers used with one on hand for a spare
All of the APRS trackers were completely battery powered
All of net control was using battery power and the APRS computer was running with battery backup.
Thanks to communications capabilities, a cell phone was recovered, 2 rental canoes were located, an EMS boat called for help to be towed back to HQ, and a missing life jacket was located.
The ARRL form FSD-157 sums it all up as 155 man-hours and $6,825 in equipment with an equivalent labor cost of over $1,500.00! Grand total for project - $8,375
NRR-04 Communicators:
James McClain, KD5CCI – Real-time weather monitoring
Robert Herron, KD5UAD – Net Control
Sissy Herron, KD5UBO – Assistant Net Control
Bob Ham, N5GCU – Communications at Put-In
Ray Dunkin, WA5WLL – Communications at Take-Out
Kent Tannery, KD5SHM – EMS Boat
Mike Miles, KV5P – EMS Boat
Mike Miles, WD5EFY – Asst. Net Control (yes, there are two of us !)
Scott Curry, KD5THP – EMS Boat
Mike Sherwood, W5VET - Van Communications
Florence Garnaugh, WM6V – Van
John Jordan, N5AIU – Van
Bill Hill, W5IOU – Van
Billy Early, KA5OOZ – Van
Tom Sweany, W5QVK - Van
Others helping, donating equipment, etc:
Alan Hayes, NE5AH
Ronnie Harrison, KB5UAU
Jeanie Miles, Logging / Mapping Assistant - HQ
Map of River Route
General info on the Neches River Rendezvous available on the Lufkin Convention and Visitors Bureau site
Contact Mike Miles if you need more information or would like to participate.