September 2025 By the Sea Half Marathon After Race Report
Thank you everyone for staffing the By-The Sea race last Sunday.
The weather was gorgeous!
There was a police officer stationed at my location; he closed down one side of the road for runner safety, which helped a lot -- we had runners going in both directions along Essex, which also had a fair amount of car traffic.
We had a hard time hearing net control at this event (lots of static, and occasional drop outs). We may want to explore different equipment or a more elevated antenna for future events.
Repeater testing
We did some repeater testing for the By-The-Sea Half-Marathon this past week. A 5W HT is going to have trouble getting into the primary repeater, W1GLO 2-meters from 4 of our checkpoints.
None of the area repeaters were good from all of our checkpoints and none was better than the W1GLO machine. Our designated back-up repeater, Danvers, has a cycling event net at the same time as our race and it is our 2nd best bet -- but even without a competing event, still difficulties from multiple checkpoints with a 5W hand-held.
We also tested with a 10W mobile setup and it was solid from all checkpoints. I would say that we need this minimum mobile setup from checkpoints 2-6.
We have 2 loaner set-ups that we can utilize if needed.
Please get back to me ASAP so we can form plans as needed.
June 2025 Twin Lobster Half Marathon After Race Report
Thank you volunteers for a great race today. Everyone was loud and clear. Big race! Final count was about 950 runners. Things appeared to go very smoothly. Net communication was excellent. Any lessons learned? Suggestions for future races?
If you can volunteer for any future races, please email Chris, W1TAT. You can check where volunteers are needed on the race web page.
Thanks for your service today!
73
Kevin, K1KL
May 2025 Barns and Blooms Half Marathon After Race Report
Thank you volunteers for a great race today. All cylinders firing and great communications. If you have anything for the "Lessons Learned" column, please message us.
73
Kevin & Chris
April 2025 Radio Safety Team Update
Dear Volunteers,
You are on our roster as either a current volunteer signed up for 2025 races or a past volunteer who we hope signs up for a race soon! We still have openings for some of the remaining 11 races. See the race support website for more information.
This year we have introduced two new things to our race net: Lawn Signs and a Text Group. We will update our Guidelines for CAARA Volunteers to cover these introductions.
The Lawn Signs help to let the public know who we are and what we are doing as we work a race. The Text Group is an ancillary chat group created for each race that includes the members of the team on a particular race. The Text group is not essential to conducting the net, but is a place to share information (does not replace radio when conducting the net) and questions before, during and after the race.
The attached Guidelines for CAARA Volunteers is a draft of a new version of the Guidelines that includes:
- a new section on lawn signs
- a new section on the text group
- a small addition to the mission statement
All revisions and additions are in green typeface. We invite your comments and questions for consideration before a revised version is distributed before the Twin Lights race on May 4th.
Kindly reply with your thoughts, suggestions, or questions before April 29th.
Many thanks!
Kevin, K1KL
kevinlyonsk1kl@gmail.com