Here is something fun to do over a weekend. Bill KK6HRW and I took off up Highway 395 to Ridgecrest for a weekend of helping out on a road rally. It was not much of a road, mostly dirt and sand, but something that I easily made in my Hyundai Sante Fe, other hams made it in their weekly Honda sedans.
Our job, as Hams, is to keep the course safe. Using our vehicles, we block side roads to the course and log and announce the race cars as they go by our spot. There is an EMT and a Sheriff on each course, and if something happens, we give the call out to Net Control and they take the appropriate action. In fact, the event could not take place without Ham operators. Many times, as I was walking around with my WB6RLC hat and my RATS badge, competitors would stop me and thank me for volunteering for the event.
Some of the cars are older, like VW Rabbits, some are newer as a Ford Focus. At the awards banquet, I got talking to a guy in a wheelchair. I had seen him around in the service area and wondered how he fit into the scheme of things. Turns out he was the driver of the Mazda RX7 car. The Driver! Not the navigator, or a rich sponsor of the car, he is the driver of a race car. He is a paraplegic and operates the car using controls on the steering wheel. Kudos dude!
So give this a try. The next rally is in Gorman (at the top of the 5 FWY) on August 25th. Stay tuned.
Glenn
WB6RLC
