To volunteer as an Amateur Radio Operator for the Marine Corp Marathon Historic Half Marathon the process is handled through the Marine Corps Marathon Office's Volunteer Portal. The link to that portal for the Half Marathon is https://haku.ly/738972230a. Look for Sunday, May 17th and then "Amateur Radio Operator (Licensed Operators Only)". All information that I need to complete your assignment will be harvested from their database. If you have a preference for location put it in the "Additional Comments for Volunteer Coordinator or Component Lead i.e., Medical Lead" field.
CHANGE: Please email me at rvarcevents@gmail.com the standard information: call sign, cell phone number, t-shirt size, and preferred location if you have already signed up with the MCMO or after you have signed up with the MCMO. I'm having a difficult time getting a complete roster from them.
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Access to the Race Course will be restricted. You will need a wrist band, parking pass (see parking later), and safety vests. Last I was told the MCMO ARO vest have all molded and are no longer available. I have some ARO vest from my club. If you have a ANSI Class 2 predominantly yellow safety vest that is acceptable. No vest with corporate or business logos or names will be allowed. A vest with a ARO related logo (i.e. club, ARES, RACES, EMCOMM, etc.) or name is acceptable I will be picking up the wristbands from the MCM in early May. You will need your parking pass, wristband, and vest the day of the event. All runners and volunteers have been told to look for our vests if there are issues that need to be communicated. If you are not wearing the wristband, you will not be allowed on the course. Below are the Current pick-up dates & time, locations, and talk-in repeater. If none of these work for you please contact me immediately so we can try to work something out. IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE TO DISTRIBUTE VEST AND WRISTBANDS ON RACE DAY AS A NORMAL OCCURANCE! For those coming from out of state or a significant distance in state, contact me I will make arrangements. King George folks, please let me know if you plan on picking up during the time I have scheduled in KG. I have retired and joined the contractor ranks. I no longer commute to Dahlgren every day. If I haven't heard from you I may not stay the entire hour. For those picking up in Prince William County prior to their ARES Training, please let me know in advance if that is where you intend to pick up your wristbands and if you need a vest. I will not be there as that is the morning of the Semper Fred 5K. I need to give Dave Lane (PWC EC) the correct number.
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Some roads start to close as early as 0300. All course roads will be closed by 0530. Please see the Parking and Road impact map below in Parking. Your parking pass, wristband, and vest should get you through. We expect all operators to be on station and setup at least 15 minutes prior to net check-in. Net check in is at 0515. Please leave yourself plenty of time to get on station.
Due to the large number of road closures starting at 0300 and large area covered by the race, there will be no central rally and briefing in person. The briefing will take place on the air at check-in.
The race starts at 0600
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Our primary mission is eyes on the course to provide safety and back up the Marine Corps Marathon personnel. In the event of a downed runner, contact Net Control immediately. There will be an ambulance and medical personnel on site for the duration of the event under the command of Top Doc. When calling for medical assistance please use the RVARC Medical Dispatch (right click "Save As") form for the initial information to provide.
If you are at an Aid Station, Water Point, or Food Stop please relay any information requested through Net Control. Net Control may have information from the MCM Staff for you to relay to the staff at you location.
Aid Stations, we are there for voice operations this year. The MCM has a contract with George Washington Medical who will be providing their own medical tracking app and equipment.
If you are at a Mile Marker, please relay the bib number of the first male and first female runner past your location for the Half Marathon and Duo and the time they past your location.
Division Shadows: I will contact you directly to provide you Division Commander's name, email, and phone number. Please contact them prior to race day to arrange a meeting location and time race morning. They may reach out to you first. Your job will be to relay information from you Division Commander to net control and from other operators on the course in their area of operation to them. If they have information they want relayed to someone in their area of operation, you must go through net control to establish the direct communication.
The race is normally completed around lunch time.
All stations please report when the last runner and Tail End Charlie passes your location. Please asked to be relieved and receive confirmation from Net Control before leaving your station. Division Shadows, you can turn in your vest to Tail End Charlie and get your shirt, but please stay with your Division Commander until the race completes in their area of responsibility. Once they give you permission to be relieved, contact net control.
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NEW INFORMATION: Please register for a parking pass for Sunday's race using the link below:
Parking Registration: https://haku.ly/028b97fc8e
Please do this ASAP as parking passes will be emailed out in the next few days. Your will need this pass to park along the course an if your are in Celebrate Virginia (Start/Finish) you will need it to be able to get into that area
You will receive a personalized parking pass via email from the Marine Corps Marathon Program Office starting around May 11th. You must display this on your dash. THIS DOES NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO PARK ON THE COURSE. This will help you get past MOST street closures to get to your location.
We have permission to access the course. You will need your parking pass, wrist band, and vest to be distributed later. DO NOT argue with police or MCM staff if they will not let you through. Radio Net Control. We are co-located with law enforcement and MCM staff. It is much more difficult to help you if you are in handcuff or the officer has already started to put pen to paper for a ticket. When parking do no park on the actual road the runners will be running on (ie. the race course). Please park on a near by street or lot. Please also get to your location before the roads in your location close. See below for the parking and road impacts
There is a local towing company that will begin towing vehicles off the course around 0200. Please make sure you have your parking pass visibly displayed. Any issues with the towing company please radio net control. DO NOT ARGUE WITH THE TOW TRUCK OPERATORS. THEY ARE UNDER DIRECTION OF THE POLICE TO CLEAR ALL VEHICLES FROM THE COURSE - NO EXCEPTIONS. YOU WILL BE TOWED.
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This course can easily be worked with an HT on 5 watts with a reasonably good antenna (no rubber ducks).
Please use a headset or ear piece. It can get noisy during this event. We also don't want spectators standing near by hearing all the net traffic.
Set the timeout timer on you radio to no more than 2 minutes. 1 minute is preferred and will work for most stations.
In the past I've used 1 HT battery and been about half way through my 2nd by the end of the race. I was in a position where I was transmitting a good deal though. Hopefully, this helps.
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We are doing things differently this year to help with coverage. K4TS works better West of RT 1. WX4EMC works better East of RT 1. Please look at the assignment sheet for your primary repeater frequency. They are labeled A (Alpha) and B (Bravo). Over the radio we will only use the names Alpha and Bravo. They are backups for each other.
A (Alpha) will be WX4EMC UHF repeater 442.850(+) PL79.7. B (Bravo) will be K4TS VHF repeater 147.015(+) PL79.7. Please have both programmed into your radio in advance. If one fails Net Control may have you switch to the other.
We will also have Meshtastic up and running on race day. We have 2 new router nodes in Fredericksburg. One at Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, and one on Executive Plaza in downtown Fredericksburg. I will also be deploying a portable router node at net control at the Hilton Garden Inn in Celebrate Virginia. We will be using the NoVA Mesh configuration. Please see the NoVa Config PDF (right click and select download) for detail on how to configure your Meshtastic device. I have also configured a dedicated channel "FBXARES" to use. The "Pre-Shared Key" you will need is blBhVTA0VVkzU2taTU9xag== Meshtastic is in early stages in Fredericksburg and this will be the first event we have really tested it at. This is not to be the primary means of communications but something I encourage people to try and test out if you have a node and are willing to do so.
If all else fails I have everyone's cell phone number. Please have the cell phone number for the ECIC (Scott Larimer, KN4RPA ECIC (540--604--3196)) with your in in your phone on race day
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Any questions asked by the public or the media, are to be directed to the Race Officials. If people ask you about amateur radio, do what we all do best and share our love and knowledge of our hobby. As long as it doesn't interfere with you primary duty of supporting the race.
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Below is a Google Earth KMZ file of the whole course. This file can be used with Google Earth on you computer or phone. It is a good reference on race day. By default I have turned of the layer for Course Marshals. You can turn this layer back on if you desire. Right click and "Save Link As" to download.
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