2019 Waco Wild West Bike Ride   —   SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 21

Official Course Maps & Turn-by-Turn Instructions
  
HOTARC Files
WWW Bike Ride logo

HOTARC provides radio communications in support of this annual event sponsored by the Waco Bicycle Club that involves several hundred participants and volunteers. This year's WWW Bike Ride was held Saturday, September 21, 2019, starting in Indian Springs Park in downtown Waco at 8:00 am. This half-day event accommodates riders of many abilities with courses of varied lengths: 10, 25, 52, and 64 miles—supported by several rest stops, SAG vehicles, and radio communications provided by HOTARC members. Notably: This is the first year without a 100-mile course, which greatly simplified planning and staffing for both the Bike Club AND HOTARC.

WWW100 course map

(Click above for larger image.)

Riders ready photo

This event requires volunteers in the pace cars and at the many rest stops around the course. An amateur radio operator at each rest stop permits relaying of timely progress information as well as break-downs, injuries, need for supplies, and so forth. HOTARC member's APRS trackers provide GPS position data for Net Control and others to track the movements and current location of significant vehicles in real time, such as the Sherriff's pace car and SAG vehicles, as depicted in the image here (all the tracks from the event!).

Although this event is well "planned," there are still plenty of surprises for us every year, and it is an outstanding training opportunity for a real disaster requiring radio com­mun­i­ca­tions from several remote locations—all reporting vital information back to and coordinating with a Net Control. Clint Anderson AE5CA coordinated and planned HOTARC's role in this event. In particular, Clint created new digipeaters and trackers for this event, which performed admirably, as you can see from the image above showing the APRS tracks.

For your information, here's how we configure the APRS trackers for special event tracking (with examples from the 2015 WWW event), and the course map files (for example, from the 2016 event) used by the APRSIS program. (Note: APRSIS is easy to install; not so easy to setup and use. So, give yourself a couple of weeks to learn BEFORE your event!)

See our Special Events Archive for previous runnings of the WWW100 (aka WWWC).



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