10,000+ police officers entrust their lives to Amateur Radio

10,000+ police officers entrust their lives to Amateur Radio

More than 10,000 law enforcement personnel from around the world have assembled on Death Valley Road, in the Mojave Desert outside of Baker, California to begin this weekend's 30th annual running of what is known as 'The World's Longest Police Foot Pursuit'.

The Baker to Vegas Challenge Cup Relay Race, a gruelling, 120 mile ordeal, has become the premier competitive event among the worlds law enforcement agencies.

The race begins outside of Baker, California at the gateway to Death Valley. Death Valley holds the record as the hottest location on earth, with an officially recorded temperature of 134.0 F (57.6C). Ground temperatures in this area can exceed 200 F. This land truly belongs to the rattlesnakes and coyotes.
The race winds through the Mojave Desert before crossing the Spring Mountains at Mountain Springs Pass (5,530 Ft Elv) and then descending into the glitter gulch, Las Vegas, Nevada, some 120 miles from the Start Line.

Humans do not fare well in this extreme environment. Severe medical incidents, as well as deaths occur in this event. There is no telephone service or medical facilities in this desolate part of the world. The event must carry in all of their own emergency medical personnel and equipment. They must also build their own communications infrastructure.

The communication system needs to cover an area of 8,100 square miles, roughly the same area as the states of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined. Entering the picture is Joy Matlack KD6FJV and her 650 amateur radio volunteers. Matlack, the long serving Communications Director oversees a multi-tiered infra-structure of ham radio, business band, aeronautical, and public safety communication systems.

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Amateur radio operators build and deploy the portable repeater systems that seamlessly cover to entire 8,100 sq miles. They also build and deploy the links used by the med-evac teams
Baker to Vegas, known to those around it as the B2V is broken up into 20 race stages. It is at these stages that the teams change runners. Amateur radio operators serve as the staff for these stages.

The hams provide the timing and scoring functions, operate the public address system, staff early warning and early, early warning positions, summon medical assistance, and relay all of the routine and emergency radio traffic for the event.

Although the majority of the traffic handled deals with routine logistical and operational functions of the event, the primary mission of the amateur radio operators is the protection and safety of the runners and their support vehicle staffs.

All of the roadways used during the event are still open to regular vehicle traffic. The first half of the race is on what is typically lightly traveled wilderness roads. But come race weekend these routes are covered with thousands of vehicles belonging to support staff, course volunteers, and family/friends of the runners.
The race takes a dramatic turn once it reaches Pahrump. Nevada. Pahrump which was a tiny dot on the map when B2V began 30 years ago, has now grown to be a small city of 37,000. The once quiet little route NV 160 which links Pahrump to Las Vegas is now a heavily travelled thoroughfare. NV 160 is notorious for it's large number of traffic fatalities. which primarily occur as it winds into the Las Vegas valley at Blue Diamond.

Once the race enters the Las Vegas Metro area (pop.1,951,269) the runners will spend a dozen miles on urban streets. Here they will share the pavement with thousands of motor vehicles. The average vehicle in Las Vegas travels in excess of 50 MPH!

For these reasons, a team of highly trained, motorcycle mounted, amateur radio operators, known as "Motors" patrol the entire 120 miles of the race. Most of these hams are either active duty or retired peace officers who look for hazards, rules violations, and runners in need. Also as the road skirts Death Valley at the early stages of the race from the Start Line to Shoshone, California (pop. 31) the runners face the most severe conditions. A 2,000 ft rise in elevation, coupled with high temperatures and arid conditions cause this to be the location of most of the severe medical emergencies and deaths to runners.

Even police officers do not always make the wisest choices. Follow vehicle personnel often fail to correctly observe the deteriorating condition of their runner. In a few instances, they have replaced a sagging runner and then simply left him along side of the road. In one such case, the abandoned runner was experiencing a complete shut-down of his vital organs. Found by another team, he hovered near death in ICU for weeks.

Matlack now deploys a "Patrol Unit" team. This group consists of a coordinator and 6 specially trained amateur radio operators who patrol this section of highway observing the condition of each runner. They maintain continuous communications with the follow vehicles, medical evac, and race officials. They are empowered to take a runner off of the course, summon a medical response, and to enforce violations being committed by the runners support team. Both the Motor and Patrol Unit hams can issue a special green violation card affectionately called "Meanie Greenies" which can disqualify a team for infractions.

Baker to Vegas is sponsored by the Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club. In an attempt to keep the hugely popular event manageable, LAPRAC limits the number of entries to 270 teams.
Despite this, participation by support crews family, and friends from around the world has caused the number of direct and indirect participants to swell to more than 10,000 people.
Right: 2014 Berlin Team displays national pride

Many of these teams also utilize their own independent crews of ham radio operators. These team specific hams provide effective logistical support for the officer-athletes on their team.

With such a huge communications network, one that bridges several radio services, equipment failures are to be expected. When they do, a special technical team of amateur radio operators spring into action. This very mobile, highly qualified, crew of specialists quickly deploy and resolve any technical issues. They are also the people who set up and take down the system of temporary repeaters and links.

One final team of amateur radio operators contribute to the overall enjoyment of this event and they are the APRS specialists. This group coordinates the real time position reporting activities of the various team follow vehicles. You can follow your favorite teams progress here: http://b2v.findu.com/

In the three decades of this rugged, isolated event. More than a quarter of a million law enforcement personnel, their families, and their friends have felt safe in the knowledge that "In this chase, Amateur Radio is on the Case".


John-N7UR

Original story:
http://nevadahamradio.com



http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2014/march/baker_to_vegas_run.htm

 

Death Valley is a great place to visit. On a vacation visit I had planned one day but spent five and did not see it all.

TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo

 

Tom , you came back from the dead

 

Didn't know I was there.

Will have to check my calendar.

TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo

 

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

 

My son, N6GQB, a 27 year police veteran Sergeant, ran B2V yesterday for the 15th straight year as did several of my other long time law enforcement associates. Amateur radio does play a significant role in providing logistical and administrative message handling via radio. It does, when needed, provide more urgent communications such as requests for medical assistance for a downed runner.

Much has changed since I ran in B2V's predecessor event back in the '70's. Perhaps the most significant change has been the degree to which participating teams are able to provide their own communications and the assignment of tactical medics to the "sag vehicles" used by each team. With an increased understanding of the physical effects long distance running can have on participants the type of incident described in the post where a struggling runner was left on his own are now extremely unlikely to happen. The tactical medics in the sag vehicles are highly trained and they monitor their teams runners physical health on a frequent basis along the route.

 

Looks like the "reason" I been needing to take cross country road trip from SC to Cali. Amateur radio operator has radio will travel...lol

 

I second this, I missed the cut off for the Run For The Wall (http://rftw.org/) this year, looks like I need to add another event to my bucket list to assist in.

 

Should be http://www.nevadahamradio.com/

 

Sorry about the URL. I've now fixed it.
Richard g4tut

 

200 degrees?

Hey, John N7UR

Sounds like an awesome event, and a great one for hams, but the story didn't need the over-hype "Death Valley holds the record as the hottest location on earth, with an officially recorded temperature of 134.0°" It's March. The high today in Death Valley was 75°. It was nicer there today than most of the rest of the country. The low temperatures in the mountain passes were probably a bigger problem.

I've been known to over-hype a headline now and then, but it's always tongue-in-cheek, or at least a wink.

73,
Gary KN4AQ
HamRadioNow.tv

 

Some info.
http://www.radiobaker2vegas.org/

And roving Safety Patrol too.

 

It may well have been pleasant this year...however the event is usually held the latter part of April...the temperature at the start line in 2012 was 113F.

 

An interesting side note is that the race has never been halted because of extreme heat....it has been halted due to snow. In 1987 a blizzard at Mountain Springs Pass forced the race to be halted. Mountain Springs Pass is the Stage Checkpoint that I manned for many years before moving over to Patrol Unit. Our Stage would open around mid-night, we would be frozen stiff by 5:00 AM and by noon we would be sunburned to a crisp.

Here's another Youtube video from a couple years ago about comms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzJ0Z5rDKDY



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzJ0Z5rDKDY

 

I went to Afghanistan for work, lived there for the entire year working 12 hour days..7 days a week for the entire 365 days. Of course, on those days or weeks with plenty of free time on my hands build ramsey kits at Camp Dwyer and Leatherneck but didn't officially operate any amateur equipment until getting back home in Summerville, SC. But for the year my wife patiently awaited with nervous concerns of where i was living for that year gave her back almost entire year devoted to enjoy seeing my face tossing my alarm clock away not wanting to be employed so she could enjoy and get to be with me again. We took a trip, planned during while i was in Camp Leatherneck of taking a road trip but had many different destinations of which there were no rush to get and from. This was accomplished by saving a portion of my bi-weekly paycheck multiplied by 26 weeks not including the fact that being out of country for over 330 days gives one the sweet reward of a heavy federal and state return to enjoy a long, enjoyable road trip and taking many photos plus videos along the way of our adventure. It took a whole month plus a few days to finally turn into our driveway and so enjoyed by life's distractions of nature, landscapes across the interstate 40 roadway had to be reminded that a calendar month had passed. Amateur radio is one of my many hobbies but life should be first and foremost to all including those on qrz. I did turn on my kenwood tm-d710 aprs/dual band transceiver an occasionally but the majority of my time was devoted to one of the cherished people in my life God has blessed me with and thought i'd share this with this particular posting, it's about people who we cherish. Whether it's law enforcement or in most cases loved ones. Cherish life. 73 de N2OBS.