Poor Use of Technology

Last weekend I helped out with the Wasatch 100 ultra marathon. Basically about 400 people signed up to try and run 100 miles in a 36-hour time period. I help with 2 such events every year, with this being the second one. I get to hang out with my wife and a few friends all night on Friday recording when runners come through the 64-mile aid station. We then send the runner number with arrival and departure times to the race organizers who make the information available on their website. This helps friends and family know where runners are but it also helps if we need to do any search and rescue for overdue runners.

I have been helping with the Wasatch 100 for about 4 years now and taken a primary role for the past 2. We use packet radio to transmit the data and that saves a lot of time over sending the information by voice. Both can be done with ham radio and both work well for us.

Last year I was asked to set up a new ham radio technology called a mesh network. The primary radio person before me had tried for 2 years to get it working only to have it fail. I didn't have enough time to work with the organizer ham radio operators to get it set up before the run started and so we went without it. Besides, we had a perfectly reasonable solution with packet radio. Sure it is slow, but it works.

This year, the organizer ham radio operators enlisted the services of a new guy to try and set up the mesh network again. The new guy let me know his plan and I welcomed him onto the radio team. I also filled him in on previous years and the attempt to get the new technology working. We all showed up and started getting things going. The packet radio worked as well this year as it did last and the new guy never could get the mesh network completely running. When it came time to take down our equipment, the new guy had a lot of hardware to pack up and fit in his truck. We just had a tiny little radio, laptop computer, and an antenna.

The new guy summed up his experience with using a mesh network instead of packet radio by saying, "It is a complicated solution to a problem that has already been solved." My fellow ham radio operators at our aid station couldn't agree more.