Hello Everyone –

You are receiving this message because you are an officer of an amateur radio club in the Indianapolis metro area.

Please allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Brent Walls and my amateur radio callsign is N9BA.  I am coordinating amateur radio communications support for the 2023 500 Festival Mini Marathon on Saturday May 6^th.  This is one of the most iconic mini marathons in the nation and I need your help getting the word out to potential volunteers in your club.  To fully support this event, we will need 70+ amateur radio operators.

Amateur radio operators will be stationed at pit stops (medical and water), at mile markers, the finish line area and other strategic locations.  Our primary mission is to provide communications support to the medical and logistical operations for overall public safety.  This is a great opportunity to showcase our capabilities to the 500 Festival, public safety partners and the general public.

I would like to ask you to share this opportunity with your club members and encourage them to consider volunteering to support this event.  All they need is a dual band (VHF/UHF) radio capable of operating up to 6 hours (extra batteries).  Most assignments will be handheld friendly as we will use local repeaters for most communications.  The operational period for all amateur radio operators begins at 0630 and will be a staggered release no later than 1230.

Anyone interested in volunteering can use the link below to register as an amateur radio communicator for this event. 

Anyone with questions can contact me directly by e-mail at bwalls5@outlook.com and I will be glad to answer their questions.

Regards,

Brent Walls N9BA

• The next members meeting will be on Monday, March 20, 2023, at 7:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the Hope’s Point Baptist Church, 1703 S Miller Ave., Shelbyville, IN. See you there.
• Ham Breakfast with the Hams:  Breakfasts are always held on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month at 8:30AM at the Shelbyville Denny’s restaurant located on the East side of Shelbyville at the I-74 and SR44 interchange. See you there.
• The 220 MHz repeater has been repaired under warranty by the manufacturer. Issues were diagnosed and repaired in the receiver section of the repeater. We will get it back in service as soon as we can make an antenna replacement.
• Both Rush County repeaters will be getting some new hardline and antennas in the very near future. Funding was obtained for the antennas and hardline by the Rush County Emergency Management. This should make for a vast improvement in the coverage area for those two repeaters. The supplier is indicating that work should commence around the first week of November now.  
• The Indiana Statewide DStar net is held every Thursday evening at 8:00 PM on Reflector 24B. Our local DStar repeater is always on Reflector 24B on Thursday evenings.
• You can catch up on your CW and Digital Slow Scan TV on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 8:50 AM on 144.36 MHz. If you are not fluent in CW, then we invite you to cheat a little and fire up FLDIGI and join on in. After CW we then fire up the Digital SSTV program EasyPal and send pictures back and forth over the airwaves.
• On Sunday evenings you can get your fill of 2 meter simplex activity. Starting around 8:00 PM there is an FM roundtable on 146.52 MHz. Immediately thereafter, there is a 2 Meter SSB simplex roundtable on 144.21 MHz. They are on Upper Sideband. For further details about this roundtable and other simplex 2 meter activities, check out the Indiana Simplex Operators Facebook page. There is more and more 2 meter simplex activities going on these days. Don’t get left out of the fun.