SEA OTTER CLASSIC 2023 MISSION COMPLETE FOR THE YEAR
The San Benito County Amateur Radio Association with assistance from amateur radio operators from three other counties provided communication support for the Sea Otter Classic in April 2023. The Sea Otter Classic is a bicycle event in Monterey County with about 7000 participants and tens of thousands of total attendance over 4 days
Depending on the event, we provided between 4 to 8 remote communication stations in the back country on the Fort Ord National Monument and a net control station by Laguna Seca Communications. We staged our efforts in the paddock of the Laguna Seca Recreation Area. During these four days, we provided emergency communications, event status and tactical information. We start early morning around 6:30, deploy out to the back country around 7:00 and work until mid-afternoon to early evening. This is a rare opportunity to drive on to the Fort Ord property and spend the day supporting an event that supports veterans and the local community.
We generated 48 pages of ICS-214 log sheets and captured over 300 pictures. In total, we brought 23 volunteers and over eight-hundred-person hours to this event. This year we supported an additional day in the Fort Ord Back Country for a total of four days.
As usual we set up a VHF amateur radio repeater and a fill-in APRS digipeater on a tower near the venue to support the event.
Using our new communications trailer, we used its screens to improve our APRS tracking which allowed us to locate our APRS equipped volunteers and SAG support vehicles that we equipped with APRS trackers. This was very useful to get an operational picture of our venue.
We have a system to support these events and we followed what worked in the past and continue to improve. Each year, we continue to bring new equipment, new ideas and new approaches to fine tune our operation to provide more flexibility and features to the event.
We utilized Zoom calls to provide information and answer questions before the event. This was highly successful in giving the operators confidence as to their role and answering any questions.
One take away I have from this weekend is to look at the big picture. I know one cyclist was frustrated with the lack of water at a water stop
and took it out on one of our volunteers and threw his water bottle at him. On the other hand, we had a young cyclist ask us what we were
doing while in the paddock and took time to thank us for volunteering and supporting them out there. I think there are many more that are
appreciative than the bad actors with a misplaced temper.
Photos we’ve collected are up on social media. (Facebook (https://facebook.com/sbcara), Twitter (https://twitter.com/sbcara), and Instagram (https://instagram.com/n6sbc) ).
If you interested in volunteering next year (April 14-18, 2024) please contact [email protected] or sign up to be added to the groups.io for
interested volunteers at https://sbcara.groups.io/g/soc-interest
73,
Tim Takeuchi – W6TST
– Timothy S. Takeuchi – sbcares.org
San Benito County (XBE) COM-L: Communication Unit Leader – W6TST
Chief ACS/RACES Officer / ARES DEC: District Emergency Coordinator / ARRL PIO
Sea Otter Classic Volunteer Communications Leader
