[CTSARA] Ham Radio Support Needed - Oct 16 CF Charity Ride

[Jon Perelstein]

GNARC and SARA have offered to provide communications for the Cystic
Fibrosis "Cycle for Life" on Sunday Oct 16 and we need volunteers please.

The ride starts at 9am at Luciano Park in Westport (near the railroad
station).  It's expected that we'll be needed until 3pm, although some
people will be able to leave as early as 1pm.  There are two routes:

-- a short route of about 30 miles that goes up into much the same area as
the Bloomin Metric up into Weston.
-- a long route of about 55 miles that goes well up into Redding and Bethel.
 The long route overlaps the short route in part, but at least 50% of it is
not the same.

We need to staff the base station, at least one SAG vehicle, and five rest
stops.  In addition, Toy and I are trying to convince them that they need at
least one other vehicle (and possibly two) to cover that much road.  There
are a very limited number of riders (under 100) because this is a fundraiser
in which the riders have to raise a fair amount of money to participate.

Because the ride goes up to Bethel, this could be a challenging effort from
the ham radio technical point of view.  We're going to look at using the CAR
A 147.300 with Echolink to the Norwalk 440 and we're going to look at HF
NVIS to Danbury (Toy and I have had an on-going discussion about HF NVIS
with the Danbury people for other purposes).

How about it folks.  This is another good opportunity to show everyone what
we ham radio can do and it will offer some interesting ham radio challenges.

73s
Jon
WB2RYV