1998 TEXAS WATER SAFARI

That's right partner! Two hundred sixty miles of non-stop paddling from San Marcos, Texas to Seadrift, Texas. Start out at the beautiful Aquarena Springs on Spring Lake (the headwaters of the San Marcos River) where glass bottom boat tours are given. Now start paddling your arms off in the clear fresh spring water and end up in the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico after you have navigated across open water in Guadalupe and San Antonio Bay. The finish line is the flagpole at Bayfront Park; Seadrift, Texas.

If you are the winner, you will have completed the non-stop race somewhere in the area of 35 - 43 hours ( 1997 high water record was 29 hrs:46 min.) when there has been lots of rain to fill the rivers. If there has been little rain, then you, the winner, will spend 47-58 hours ( 1984 low water record was 54 hrs:00 min.) in your ordeal of fire. What if you are not the winner? Holy Cow! You only get 100 hours to finish! The race starts at 9 A.M. on a Saturday morning in early June and ends the following Wednesday at 1 P.M.. There are several classes of canoe teams that can enter. If you are real macho, you are allowed to go solo. To see the 1998 Texas Water Safari Complete Finisher List, click here.

Now that we have gotten past the starting line, what kind of physical dangers will our bodies go through? Let's start with sleep deprivation, heat exhaustion, dehydration, amnesia, followed by vivid hallucinations. Now comes the water hazards: rapids, paddling over dams, struck by overhead branches and other manmade structures, pinned against tree limbs, trunks, or rocks, and lastly portaging your canoe through, over, and around log jams. Oh yes, one other matter of concern, the perils of mother nature: wasp stings, fire ant bites, snake bites, alligators, stepping on stingrays and finally sharks. Since you will be wet much of the time, you may have to contend with diaper rash.

But despite all of the above, when you finish, you will have a new outlook on life forever. Believe it or not this is really a fun event. This year will be the 36^th river race. It all started back in 1962 in a bar when some people bet some local that they could take a motorless boat from San Marcos, Texas to Corpus Christi, Texas. Thirty days later they succeeded and thought that others might enjoy the challenge. So, in 1963, the first race was held. Would you believe at that time the race was over 500 miles long? That was when people were leather tough? Even today everything has to be carried inside the boat. The only thing that can be given to the canoers is water and ice.

Now for the fun part, amateur radio (ham) to the rescue! You can imagine what a chore it is keeping up with 50-70 canoes and crews strung out over 260 miles of river. However, with 50 plus hams located at 13 check points, the job gets done in an excellent manner. Our job is to provide a margin of safety and to keep track of which boats have pulled out of the race so people will not start trying to locate boats that are no longer participating. There are race officials at various check points where the teams have to sign a rooster. At these checkpoints, we make a note as to what time the boat passed and what the boat number was. This information is then transmitted downstream to the next point. If a boat quits, that information is also relayed. In this manner, if any boat does not pass a certain point within a reasonable time, the race officials will know exactly what section of the river a boat is missing, thus saving valuable search time.

The farther from the starting point a check point is located, the longer it has to be manned by amateur radio operators. The hams near the finish have to be in place a little after a day has passed from the starting time to the official finish time. Thanks to many willing volunteers, this public service activity is a real joy to participate in. This will be my 17^th year to serve. I look forward to this event every year; it has now become a family event. A little over a year ago, my wife Barbara, KC5ZSB, and my son, Sam, KC5ZSQ, became "radio-active". That is, they studied and earned their amateur radio license from the Federal Communication Commission. For the last two races they have collected boat numbers, times, and radioed this information downstream from Cottonseed Rapids to Staples Dam. Each year I meet new hams and lots of familiar faces. I am at the start of the races at Aquarena at 9 AM Saturday morning. Then, we drive to Cottonseed Rapids about 5 miles east of San Marcos and start recording the first boats coming past this point starting around 10 AM.. What nice memories this event has made for me.

Radio communications itself between checkpoints can be challenging. Almost all of the communication points are located below a highway bridge. Over past years, VHF/UHF repeaters that take radio signals from the checkpoints and "retransmit" them downstream were sometimes not available for various reasons. This made communications more difficult. Beam antennas would have to be mounted on a short pole and carefully clamped to the bridge as to cause no hazard to traffic. Drops of 100 feet of coax from antennae to radio are not uncommon. If you are not located under a bridge, then you are down at river level which can be some distance below the average elevation of the terrain. Given these communication obstacles, experimentation with various combinations of equipment, antennas, and location is a natural evolution of the communication problem solving process.

Over the years I have tried many mad scientist radio brainstorms. Maybe these brainstorms are really a manifestation of the "junk box" mentality or "What can I use that I already have?". At Cottonseed Rapids where I work down at river level, there is a large hill of about 300 feet from the main road to the river. Over this distance there is a vertical drop of about 50 feet elevation. From this point to the downstream communication point at Staples Dam, the river has many bends and is heavily wooded. At Staples Dam, the hams set up a beam antennae pointed toward Cottonseed Rapids. Unless we have a push-up pole located at least 100 feet or more up the hill, we cannot communicate. Even repeaters were hard to hit at river bottom. What that means is that you will have to climb the hill in the hot summer temperatures many times over a four hour period to communicate. Once up on top of the hill at the main road, then only a watt or two on vhf mag mount 5/8 th wave antennae works very well.

Pondering the above in 1988, I realized that what I needed to accomplish communication was to get my signal up the 300 foot hill and down the road. I began to think of the various radio equipment that I had ; I did not have all the right combinations of equipment. Enter the brainstorm. I remembered my now late friend, WA5RON, Jerry Johnson had a pair of World War II vintage walkie-talkies called the BC-611. This radio operates on 80 meters (3885 MHZ) AM and puts out 1/4 watt. Could this radio be used with a cross link from my Yaesu FT-757GX HF rig that will operate AM to my Yaesu FT-209R all mode 2M rig. With Jerry's help, the answer was "Yes!".

It worked well. Here is how the set-up looked. In my Suburban, I had the FT-757GX connected to a Hustler 80M whip antennae. My 2M rig was linked to the HF radio by a simple circuit designed by Jerry. The 2M rig was connected to a 5/8 wave mag mount on the roof. Down by the river, we used these John Wayne walkie-talkie on 80M AM to get up the hill and come out on 2M FM heading for Staples Dam. The 2M signal coming from hams at Staples Dam would go back down our hill on 80M AM.. Our only fear was that some local SPAMMERS (Society for the Preservation of AM) might be on the frequency these walkie-talkies were set up on. We had heard them there before. We were fortunate and things worked out just fine.

In 1990 following the same train of thought of using what I had, I fixed up cross links of 49 MHZ to 2M and a back-up cross link of 11M to 2M. However, the 49 MHZ link did not work due to a large amount of electrical interference at this location because of the high voltage lines nearby. So, I connected up the 11M / 2M link in the Suburban and used a AM 11M talkie to get up the hill. All this experimenting was very educational and gratifying to know that I used what I had easily available to me.

By 1997, cross band dual band mobile rigs and handi-talkies had become a common item. Last year we used 440 MHZ of a dual band handi-talkie to get up the hill to the mobile dual bander and out on 2M to the repeater. This year, we had access to a repeater that was easily accessible by handi-talkie from river bottom. This made it a real treat to operate by not having to lug lots of radio equipment up and down the hill.

For those of you that want to listen in on the communications that take place between the amateur radio operators at the Texas Water Safari, put the following frequencies into your scanner radio's memory. These frequencies have been used for communications in the past and subject to change. All are in MHZ (Megahertz) and FM (Frequency Modulated)signals. The Frequencies in Bold Print are for Voice and the ones that you will want to put into your scanner's memory.

Cottonseed - 147.14, 145.49, 146.76, 147.10, 145.23, 442.225 : Packet - 145.07

Staples - 147.14, 145.49, 147.10 : Packet - 145.07

Luling Hwy. 90 - 147.14, 442.1, 145.49 : Packet - 145.07

Luling Dam - 147.14, 145.49, 442.10 : Packet - 145.07 & 145.01

Palmetto Park - 442.10, 145.49, 145.15, 147.14 : Packet - 145.01

Gonzales - 442.10, 145.15 : Packet - 145.01

Hochheim - 442.10 : Packet - 145.01

Cheapside - 442.025 : Packet - 145.01

Cuero - 442.025 : Packet - 145.01

Victoria - 444.65, 145.19, 146.68, 147.16 : Packet - 145.01

DuPont - 444.65 : Packet - 145.01

Swinging Bridge - 145.19

Tivoli - 443.425, 145.19 : Packet - 145.01

Seadrift - 443.425, 145.19 : Packet - 145.01

Port Lavaca - 147.02

Shiner - 146.68

Packet Data Frequencies - 145.01, 145.07, 145.09
Try 146.52 for communications within each check point.

For the average person, the packet frequencies can be ignored. All you will hear is various tones on those frequencies. Packet radio uses a computer connected to a Terminal Node Controller, referred to as a TNC, which is connected to a radio transceiver. The radio operator types a message and the TNC converts the letters to tones and the radio transmits the tones on a selected frequency. The receiving station's radio sends the tones to the TNC which decodes the tones and displays the decoded message on the screen. A packet radio setup is doing a similar thing using radio signals as a person's ordinary computer is doing by sending tones over the phone lines in order to be connected to the Internet. The main difference is amateur radio operator is sending computer signals through the air by means of a radio signal. The advantage of packet radio is that long lists of boat numbers and times can quickly be passed along to the next radio station without the radio operator having to vocalize each boat place, boat number and time. The disadvantage of packet radio is having to use more equipment and creating more links in the communication chain that can breakdown.

The amateur radio operator working the TWS is concerned with communicating with one station upstream from him and one station downstream from him in order to pass information. The Director of Communications for the amateur radio operators will tell the hams what frequencies they are to use. Normally, we try to use a repeater that has a range that both the upstream and downstream radio stations can use. However, on the day of the race, it may be discovered that the repeater you were counting on is out of commission or working poorly. A different repeater frequency will be selected or sometimes we will work simplex, that is, from one radio to the next radio without going through a repeater. Just as the canoeist has to switch his strategy as he encounters some unexpected obstacle in the river, ham radio operators have to be flexible in modes and means of communication in order to accomplish the task at hand.

In 1998, I proposed an idea to the TWS committee (by way of Phil Bowden) as a means to help the TWS ham communications team, that boat members and their captains should be permitted to use electronic communications. Sometimes team captains were traveling back and forth between check points looking for their boat. By giving the teams the ability to tell their team captains electronically where they were, it would save unnecessary search parties looking for them. Also, if a boat member had some type of medical emergency, the members themselves could quickly communicate that help was needed.


As of 1999, boat teams and their captains were permitted to use electronic communications they were authorized to use. Most will use cell phones, personal family radio frequencies, and CB as most of these devices do not require a license from the Federal Communication Commission. However, if a boat team member and the boat captain were licensed amateur radio operators, then the ham frequencies would be available to them also.

Learn How to Become an Amateur (Ham) Radio Operator

AMATEUR RADIO IN AUSTIN, TEXAS

Hedy Lamarr - Spread Spectrum Communication Inventor

The Lamarr/Antheil Spread Spectrum Patent

Home Station Battery

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