7/20/20: The Marathon is cancelled for
2020. The Loppet folks invited us as general
volunteers and if they again need command centers.
1/19/20: We are supporting the Loppet
Foundation for their Minneapolis ski events 2/1 and 2/2/20.
10/10/16: We had a great Marathon.
We used a 5g 802.11a mesh link for a few miles near the
finish line to the St Paul Dispatch Center.
10/5/13: We were pleased to discover we
have a solid high speed data paths from our Marathon
data trailer in the low lying State Capitol grounds to three
of our D-Star repeaters, and a decent path to our newest
system in Washington County, 16 miles away.
10/1/13: We will again have five Icom
DD Mode "repeater" systems on line for the Marathon. We are
recruiting operators and have even more to do.
10/21/12: We had another successful
Marathon. We ended up using a D-Star DD point to point
(non line of sight) link to the St Paul EOC for Net 3, and a
3G/4G link for Net 1 as we had several repeater sites
offline at the last minute. The plan now
is to have the mesh backbone and an all new generation of
thin clients online for 2013. We think the
Rasberry Pi might work for our applications. Our
runner location application works on mobile devices -
Android, Apple, etc.
10/2/11: We tried out three
pieces of technology at the 2011 Marathon. One was
three D-Star radios in the same truck to three repeaters.
We used all low power (our DD machines are on great sites)
No Problems. We also tried our IP phone system -
worked great. And we tried our Ubiquity 5G radios on
an indirect (NLOS) path of 1.7 miles from the finish line to
St. Paul Fire. All were good. We also used iPads
again for hospital tent check- into to our systems.
We are running a highly secure encrypted wireless LAN in the
medical tent.
6/21/11: We are recruiting operators for on course
observer duties at Red White and Boom 7/4. In a
recent race, our folks dispatched an EMS rig when the
seriously injured runner was in an area not covered by
cell phones for 911. In our events, our team is
very tightly integrated with the medical volunteers at
every level. This also applies to the operations
of the aid station- we might help organize supplies of
ice water and towels for a surge of heatstroke patients
on a hot day- this is hardly a business function of the
event. This also frees the licensed medical team
for patient care and medical decision making duties.
The goal of the combined organization is the fastest
possible reaction time to medical emergencies.
This also eliminates any chance of functional overlap
with our EMS partners- the better the reporting the
better the odds of a "save" - it's a win win.
5/20/11: So for Red White and Boom 7/4 AM the Hennepin
County Truck is the communications center, and onsite
medical will be run out of the 84' SMES truck. 5/19/11: Twin Cities in Motion has a new Race Director.
He is Jeff Decker, who comes from New York. He has
worked/managed the New York Marathon and is familiar
with Amateur Radio. He is in favor of our strong
push toward using the Incident Command System, and is
eager to see our sohpisticated digital infrastruture in
action. He met Matt and Mike, who are our area EMS
leaders, and who team up effectively on race days to
support us. 5/15/11: We are working the Red White and Boom Half
Marathon in Minneapolis on 7/4/11. The plan is this one
is all digital. We have lots of repeaters- we need
operators with D-Star radios. All of the
communications vans have D-Star already. http://www.mtcmarathon.org/HalfMarathon/index.cfm 4/2/2011: We have a simple process for setting up
at any new event. We meet with the organizers and
obtain the goals (communicaitons, data, etc.) of the
medical side of the operation. We then discover
who the Incident Commander is (often the Medical
Director) and then set up a basic net control point and
series of communicationstions endpoints. Only then
do we pick out the technology. This would apply at
any real disaster scene- find higher authority and set
up a basic "net" structure. The really
simple version of this is to arrive and say "hi we are
communications people- who is in charge of that
section/division" - which should put us into the "useful
assets" category and not the "random untrained
volunteers" category. This is unless our skills
only cover technology more than 30 years old.
3/1/2011:
Our first 2011 event is
the Minneapolis
Marathon. Dave Johnson (Metropolitan Hospital
Compact) will be the Chair, and Mike Ostlund, N0ANC will assist Dave. The
usual assets will be requested, and we will be managing
medical communications, reporting to the Medical
Director and Incident Commander using an Incident Action
Plan. The City of Minneapolis helped us last year with
this process. We will need operators- the plan is one per mile.
The date is 6/5/11. Contact Dave or Mike here.
http://www.teamortho.us/Minneapolis-Marathon/