A busy "Ham" weekend...

It was a cloudy day in Sidney for this year's Applefest parade...probably an ominous sign that this would be the last one.  It seems the Applefest has taken its place in a long line of civic events that has been discontinued due to a lack of volunteers.  While it had a good run, the event's organizers just couldn't sustain it with the handful of volunteers it had available.

But that fact was not known that Saturday morning and the parade entries lined up in larger numbers than ever before.  The parade had always been held on Sunday afternoon, at just about the time the vendors were trying to pack up and head out of town.  So the organizers cut Sunday's activities and made it a two-day event, with the parade stepping off in the morning. 

This seemed to have an influence on the number of entries, especially the Shriners.  They alone took up almost an hour just crossing the starting line with their mini-cars, motorcycles, classic cars, walkers, etc.  It seems that there were no other Shriner events this weekend so "everyone" showed up.  All in all, there were over 75 entries.

The Shelby County Amateur Radio Emergency Services (S.C.A.R.E.S) assists the parade folks by lining up the parade entrants and making sure everyone is present and ready to go when the time comes.  Ham radio guys and gals come in handy as we are able to communicate with parade officials at the marshaling center via our hand-held radios.  This is just one of the services we provide to the community in civic events and emergency situations.  This is a pretty good group with which to be associated.

Following the parade, the group headed out to Lake Loramie to set up high frequency (HF) communications in order to participate in another comms event called "The Ohio State Parks on the Air."  This is a contest of sorts where the participating clubs take their gear to a local state park, set up operations and begin making contacts with other state parks.  The goal is to get points for contacting as many parks as possible via HF, 2-meter, or Morse Code (CW).  Each mode of operations carries certain point values and non-park contacts (people just on the air) are valued in another manner.  All the data from the contacts is sent to a contact center where scores are recorded and category winners declared.

I really like participating in this event because it goes along with my old "train as you would fight" way of thinking I knew from Army days. Having to take our equipment out in the "wild" and set it up always presented new challenges we had to overcome.  Those who keep their equipment in the "ham shack" all the time never really know how or if it will work in an emergency.  Besides, if we are in the shack, we don't get any of Sherm's brats and fixin's.

Sherm really cooks up a storm on these outings.  Kinda like the old chuck wagon days.

Grant and Rhonda are working contacts outside our S.C.A.R.E.S. unit.

One thing modern technology has taught us is that once you get something to work, take a picture of it so you are smarter next time.  It seems the guy who had the correct wiring diagram for the "Go Box" HF radio wasn't on site, so once we got it working, this got documented.

Events like the parade and the contests really help to pull the club together and allows the members to become more proficient on the use of their equipment.  Each member has his or her own particular tastes when it comes to a radio manufacturer, and a transmission type (HF, 2-meter, CW, etc.).  Each piece of equipment is different and operates differently.  Something as simple as changing a frequency, a tone squelch, an offset, etc. can really throw a wrench in the works if one hasn't had to make changes to a radio (even his own) in a while. Having to use club equipment at least gets us to use standard stuff every once in a while and helps to improve our ability to work in an emergency situation.


Preparation and practice don't  assure success, they assures confidence.

Hooah