Beargrease Amateur
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Last Update: 2/15/08

BARC Members! Welcome back to your site! If you have any suggestions for the site, please contact any board member.

Welcome new volunteers! Want to know more about BARC? Who we are, what we do? Click here 

Thank You all BARC Volunteers!

You all rose to the occasion, this was out best year yet. With 72 teams, rain, dangerous wind chills, ice, and snow, BARC members answered the call, and performed like champs. I am proud to be a part of such a phonomenal group of people. Huge pat on the back!

Board member comments:

I wanted to say thank you for the excellent job that everyone did at this years race. And especially to all the ham's that helped me out by working the check points. Sorry I didn't get a chance to visit all of you this time around, But the places that I got to visit were all nice efficiently run operations. You should all take pride in the fact that you moved to remote locations and conducted business as usual making the whole race safer for all.
I had a chance to speak with racers their crew's, Beargrease officials, Volunteers , Veterinarians and the general public and they were all impressed with the amount of work that B.A.R.C. Does in support of the race and that it is totally a volunteer club. So once again great job and thank you.
- Cory KCØCVP - 07-08 BARC Checkpoint Chair

I to would like to say THANK YOU to all who volunteered for BARC Road Crossings, I was a bit scared about having everything covered and all though not all crossings did get covered those that were the most important did and that was great. I also want to say that as someone who worked Net Control that it was also very nice to work with all of you, I may not have seen a lot of you but from what I heard it just shows how important BARC and Amateur Radio is to this and other Organizations. I am very pleased to have been able to be a part of the news story that was done on BARC and hope that it helps us to get more people involved in ham radio. (I just wish they would have gotten my better side) I hope to see a lot of you at the Critique meeting, and for those of you I do not I hope to see you at another event this summer or next year at Beargrease.
- Tim KBØOPC - 07-08 BARC Road Crossing Chair

To all of those that worked for me up at Net Control I want to thank you all for your time and efforts there in making this years race a success and those who worked from the BWARC end of things it was great to have you all on board and Thank You all for your time and efforts this year, it was great to hear you all on again. and even tho everyone wonders from the start of the race until it was done I had about 7 hrs of sleep, oh well another one for the records.
- Randy KCØRTX - 07-08 BARC Net Control Chair

Made it back home. Turned computer back on after turning coffee maker on. Laundry can wait a couple of days. The terrible weather of this years race magnifies the difficulty of what everyone of has to do to pull this thing off. The idea of finding people to stand in the rain, knowing the bottom of the thermometer is about to be prominent again and they might be stranded by ice, is mind boggling. To point to a spot on a map and tell someone they'll find a trail crossing and we'll call and give them a time window when there will be someone going by calls not only for special people but a special reality. We come together and make this happen. I'm proud to be a small part of this race. Again, I can't say enough about what a great demonstration of what ham radio can do this is. A club operated repeater system, some dedicated volunteers, we pass traffic addressing locations, status of officials, needs of participants and support staff, make adjustments in coverage. This training, experience when it means something is hard to come by.
- Len KCØEPR and Joan - 07-08 BARC Treasurers

I wanted to thank you all for making my job as road crossing coordinator for the Beargrease so much easier this year! I can't say enough about the level of cooperation and assistance I received. I plan on passing on the advice to the Beargrease that any road crossing coordinator in the future should be a HAM. Special thanks to Jeff for your help at many of those roads and to everyone that stepped in to cover most of the roads between Hwy 2 and Duluth on Wednesday. Liz (KC0ZEV) is duly impressed by the help she got from Net Control when covering London Crossing. Thanks again.
- Jean KCØZEX - Beargrease Road Crossing Corrdinator

BARC News:
  • Website work. I am in the process of making some updates and improvements to the website. The photo gallery will come back as soon as I'm done re-doing it. There are a couple other little things I'm still working on as well. If you have any questions, please contact me.

  • The road crossing coordinator Tim Davich has resigned from his position. I would anticipate that our president Jeff will designate a replacement for him soon.

  • Letter from Beargrease President Jason Rice: "I appreciate your attention to detail, and maybe more importantly--you and your crew's passion to help the Beargrease year after year in every condition, in dark and light, in cold and colder. Please make it known to all of your gang that WE DO NOTICE YOU, WE DO NEED YOU, AND WE DO APPRECIATE YOU ALL. I'm not sure we say thank you enough to you guys." Way to go BARC members!

  • Race Recording and Sunday night nets Online!!! The race week and Sunday night net recordings have all been uploaded for your enjoyment. Use the link on the left menu or click here. If you would like them on disk instead, please contact me.


    And:
  • BARC volunteers, please remember the code of ethics . We would like to provide you a friendly reminder that when volunteering with BARC, you are representing BARC as a whole as well as the entire Ham Radio community. Please also remember that even when we're in the middle of nowhere, there are lots of eyes and ears on us. Please keep these in mind while working the race this year.

    More info: Be sure you're signed up for the BARC List-server! That's the best way to stay up-to-date with the most current information. Much of our planning takes place via the list-server. List-server messages will also be interpreted vital information will be posted here on this website (see above under news). To sign up for the list server, use the sign-up box on the left menu.

    Echolink: BARC nets occur every Sunday night starting 8 weeks before the race starts. If you are not in range of the LSAC1 repeater system, you may want to check out Echolink. This is a service provided just for ham radio operators to communicate with repeater users via their personal computer. The BARC Echolink net is a closed system. You need to be included on the authorization list in the server before you will be able to log in. If you would like to participate via Echolink, please drop Jeff a line to be added to the authorization list.

    Please set up and test your equipment and connection before attempting to access the BARC net. Use the *ECHOTEST* conference to test your volume and deviation. The BARC net is not the proper place to test your Echolink set up for the first time!