Upcoming Area Public Service Events

Last Updated 9/27/2011

(Clicking on the event will take you to the event home page.)

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SARA and GNARC have been asked to provide ham radio communications support for The Norwalk Summer Series -- a series of distance running races held in various locations in Norwalk during the summer. The race director is a personal friend of mine, and I am the official scorer for these races.  The series consists of 6 races held between mid-June and mid-September.

For each race, we'll need a net control, one or two (preferably two) support vehicles, and one or two rest stops (depending on the race).  Since this is running, there are no issues with bike repair or carrying equipment.  The support vehicle(s) will simply patrol the course looking for runners who need assistance.  This is a perfect opportunity for our hams to ride the routes on bicycles, motorcycles, mopeds, or other non-traditional "vehicles".  I'm seriously thinking of turning over the scoring to someone else and riding the routes on my bicycle.  Most of the rest stops have good cell phone coverage, so our focus for rest stops will be providing hams at those few rest stops that don't have good cell phone coverage.

For this year, we've been asked to provide support for the following races:  

The Norwalk Summer Series is a charity event.  The Half Marathon is a qualifying race for both the Boston Marathon and the New York City Marathon.
The 9 mile race is dedicated to a very good drug abuse prevention program called "Courage To Speak" that targets drug use among school-age children.
The 9 miler usually attracts our US Representative to Congress as well as various State legislators.  There is often someone from the Governor's
office and it's not unknown for one of our U.S. Senators to show up.  The Half Marathon also attracts a fair number of dignitaries.
 
Since these are much lower key than the bike rides, they are perfect for people who have little or no experience doing public service events.  Toy and I are thinking that we would rotate the net control position among people who have not previously served as net control for training purposes.In addition, we want to see what we can do to use these as events to practice with APRS -- not because they need them, but because they don't need them and thus offer a low-key opportunity for us to get experience with the technologies.
 
Oh, did I mention the free ice cream??
 
It is not necessary for you to sign up for all the races.  Just one will be fine -- although of course I would like to encourage people to sign up for all of them.
 
If you're interested in participating, please contact me or Toy.
 
73s
Jon
WB2RYV 

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Last Updated 9/27/2011

Updates

J/S WB1GRB