Sunday, October 5th was a cold and rainy day for this year’s Unpaved of the Susquehanna River Valley. Even though, two hundred thirty one bicycle riders started the race from the Miller Center in Lewisburg, PA. The full segment of the race covered 120 miles through the Buffalo Run Valley and the Bald Eagle State Forest. Given the weather there were few problems with riders, though there was a medical emergency. Eleven amateur radio operators staffed eight aid stations throughout the day.
Participating amateur radio operators and their home counties were:
- Todd Landry, K1TJL, Dauphin, Todd entered the race and acted as a Rover while competing.
- Greg Guise, K3HOT, Centre
- Dwight Swaney, N3XLK, Chester
- Yi Zhang, K8QR, Centre
- Andrew Mummert, W3AND, Cumberland
- Keith Comp, KC3FVN, Perry
- Dave Kolesar, W3KCK, Centre
- Keith Kintzel, KC3JVG, Cumberland
- James Fry, KC3EWN, York
- Rina Landry, KC3OPJ, Dauphin
- Carmine Prestia, K3CWP, Centre
Everything started off with a bang. At 8:06 hours RB Winter Aid Station, K8QR, called for emergency traffic. A rider had a medical problem and requested an ambulance. Net Control, K3CWP, called 9-1-1 from his position at the Rusty Rail and requested the ambulance. Other stations suspended their transmissions while K8QR and K3CWP exchanged information for the 9-1-1 Center.
It took the 9-1-1 Center a moment to realize the K3CWP was NOT on the scene. They got the information and an ambulance and DCNR officer arrived at 08:29 hours. The rider was taken to the hospital but we learned that he was released later in the day and is now OK. Shout out to K8QR for doing a good job getting the information needed to K3CWP!
Rain throughout the day complicated things for the racers 
but did not cause the problems we though it might. Credit
the racers with being careful under bad conditions. Here’s
a photo from Greg, K3HOT, at the Jones Mountain aid station.
Todd, K1TJL, in the yellow jacket, entered the race and provided amateur communications from within the peleton. Here’s Todd at the starting line of his segment. The handheld is strapped to his back and can’t be seen in this picture. It’s not often that we get a racer to provide contact during a race.
After the emergency start it was a pretty mundane day relaying mainly administrative messages back and forth between Net Control and the aid stations. Cimarron Chacon of GRO Promotions, the Incident Commander remained near Net Control for the day. With her present we were able to resolve almost all questions immediately.
Headquarters/NCS was set up in a large game room attached to the Rusty Rails brewery in Mifflinberg. We used crossband repeat through the VHF/UHF mobile in my truck outside the brewery. The crossband repeate provided pretty solid communications throughout the day making everything easier.
This is a gravel race over ‘improved’ roads in the forest. The aid stations were set up at the intersection of different roads. The Hoofnagle aid station shown here, is pretty typical of the station locations. They also had a standby ambulances and medics for most of the day.
The locations are chosen by the race organizers. Amateur radio operators just staff the stations for communications. R.B. Winter State Park proved the most challenging location. This year comms were more difficult there than last year but with some effort we got all the messages through including the medical emergency earlier in the day.
Centre County ARES thanks GRO Promotions and the Unpaved for inviting us to provide communications, Nittany Amateur Radio Club for use of the W3YA repeater, and the above amateur radio operators who took time out of their weekend to make this a successful event.
73, Carmine W. Prestia, Jr., K3CWP
ARRL Centre County EC