Operators
| Callsign | Name | Assignments |
|---|---|---|
| AC7VL / WRJZ740 | John Wruble (SWCRS Member) | Valencia; Charloux Gap; Freeman |
| AK7W / WQYZ544 | Owen Watson | Black Hills Relay; Start Relay; Rillito |
| K6DSA / WQVS960 | David Adriaanse (SWCRS Member) | Net Control; Tiger Mine; Catalina |
| KI7LCV | Greg Guerrero | Oracle |
| KJ6DGG / WRXN660 | Todd Voigts (Tracker Dude) | Net Control; Picket Post; Start Line; Finish Line / HQ |
| KJ7AOV / WROG923 | Eric Ford (SWCRS Member) | Casa Blanca; Oak Tree |
| KJ7ZKP / WRKT709 | Lew Williams (SWCRS Member) | Santa Rita; Gila River Relay |
| KK7RZQ / WSBP631 | John Romeo | Oracle; Tiger Mine |
| KK7UFC / WSLV574 | Ann Schafer | Grand Enchantment; Gabe Zimmerman |
| KK7WBH / WSDQ265 | Don Travers | Casa Blanca |
| KM7ECL / WRPN676 | Larry Elliott (SWCRS Member) | Mt. Lemmon |
| KU0W | Rod Gowdy | Apache Springs; Catalina |
| N3HFS / WQVK616 | Franz Niedermeyer | Grand Enchantment; Gabe Zimmerman |
| W6SE / WSLQ851 | Al Martin | Gila River |
| W7CWH / WSJW663 | Chris Hawk | Tortilla |
| W7NOM | Bob Shaw | Black Hills |
| W7RUN / WRNR761 | Andrew Peck (SWCRS Member) | Freeman |
| W7WJR / WSFN474 | Michael Figueira (SWCRS Member) | Mt Lemmon |
| WB4RTP / WSHI440 | Avery Davis (SWCRS Member) | Oak Tree |
| WROH614 | Glenn Peck (SWCRS Member) | Freeman |
| WRVF452 | Mark Goudin (SWCRS Member) | Pistol Hill |
Somewhere beyond the last bar of cell service, a runner moves through the dark.
The trail disappears into the desert. Headlamp beams catch dust and rock and nothing else. There’s no traffic, no glow from a distant town, no quick way to call for help if something goes wrong.
But they are not alone.
A voice comes over the radio at an aid station miles ahead. Another operator, positioned somewhere in between, hears it and repeats it. Farther down the line, someone logs the update and passes it along again.
It’s not fast. It’s not seamless. But it works.
One runner, one message, carried across miles of terrain by people who may never see each other, but are connected all the same.
That’s the Arizona Monster 300.
The race is difficult to explain until you see it.
More than 300 miles across Southern Arizona, linking desert, mountains, and long stretches of trail that feel intentionally far from anything resembling infrastructure. It’s not a sprint. It’s not even a typical endurance event. While most events take hours to support, the Monster 300 unfolds over days, with runners passing through aid stations that become temporary outposts of light, food, and human contact.
Between those stations, there is often nothing.
That “nothing” is where communications either fail or matter most.
This year, a distributed team of volunteer operators built an ad-hoc communications network that stretched across that landscape. It wasn’t a single system. It was a blend of GMRS, amateur radio, simplex, repeaters, and, when needed, people acting as the link between them.
At its center, net control kept the bigger picture intact. Around it, aid station operators tracked runners in and out and maintained the satellite trackers that kept tabs on the runners along the course. In the spaces between, relay operators filled the gaps that maps and coverage predictions never quite capture.
By the end of the event, that system had carried hundreds of individual communications, tracked over a hundred runners, and handled the entire race without a single emergency escalation beyond an incident at the onset of the race.
On paper, that looks like a fairly clean outcome.
In reality, it was the result of constant adjustment, attention, and a willingness to step in wherever needed.
There were moments where everything just worked.
Early in the race, stations lined up well enough that the network ran on simplex alone. No repeaters, no relays, just direct communication across the desert. It didn’t last forever, it couldn’t as the footprint of the race naturally stretches with runners at various paces, but it was a reminder of what’s possible when positioning and awareness come together.
At the start of the race, high winds kicked up dust, which made for some of the worst air quality conditions seen in years. Heat also battered the course, presenting a major risk to runners – many of which come from out of state and may not be familiar with Arizona’s brutal yet breathtaking environment. The start of the race saw the medical evacuation of two runners which had developed symptoms of advanced heat stroke; actions that were directly coordinated through simplex – good old fashioned radio to radio saved the day.
More often, it was less about ideal conditions and more about making things work anyway.
Relay stations became the quiet backbone of the system. Operators staged along roads and ridge-lines, repeating traffic that couldn’t make it through on its own. Locations like Ray Road, Miller Road, and Silver King Road stopped being just points on a map and became active parts of the network.
It wasn’t a formal system. It was people solving the problem in front of them; the system adapts in real time based on the resources available to the operators.
And it worked well enough that next year’s planning is already looking at how to formalize those relay points, or even replace them with portable repeaters or shortwave that can extend coverage without relying on manual hops.
Technology helped, but it never replaces the human element. During the race’s transition across the San Pedro valley and into the Catalina Mountains, amateur radio systems and simplex channels remained essential, particularly for tactical coordination and local reliability.
As the race left the grasp of the superstition mountains and it’s deep canyons, river beds, and valleys, VHF and UHF infrastructure become the main go-to method for communication.
The use of linked GMRS repeaters extended coverage in ways that made a real difference, especially in areas that had been very difficult to manage in the 2025 run. Communication into the southern portions of the course improved, and messages moved with much less friction and much less fragmentation.
No one system or service carried the event though, and not all aide station operators were dual licensed for the repeater systems. The strength came from operators who knew how to use what was available, and when to switch approaches.
Of course, not everything worked the way it was intended to. Communications at an event with such a massive footprint does not come without lessons learned, which is what makes the challenge exciting to take on.
Some areas still challenged coverage, especially in terrain that naturally blocks signals. Several of the mid-northern aide stations proved particularly challenging, highlighting something that’s easy to overlook until it matters: even with solid operators, equipment and having access to the right parts of the spectrum matters.
In remote environments, handheld radios have limits. Power, antenna height, and placement make the difference between a working station and static.
That’s one of the clearer takeaways going forward. If a station is going to be out in the desert, it needs to be equipped for it.
There were other lessons, too, less technical but just as important.
There weren’t enough operators.
Some stations ran lean, others were well covered, but the glue that ties them together was lacking at times. Net control carried much weight, and while effective overall, there were not enough net control operators available to take the shifts needed keep a cohesive picture the entire time over the time span of a week. When responsibilities were shared, things improved quickly, which makes the solution obvious in hindsight: more people, earlier planning, and better distribution of effort. Net control can be operated from anywhere that has access to the major repeaters from the comfort of one’s home – a selling point of signing up for the role.
Not every location necessarily needs radio coverage either. Urban aid stations have resources that remote ones don’t. The value of radio support is highest where nothing else exists, although it’s always helpful to have someone available that’s dedicated to keeping information flowing between that aide station and the event’s managers. Use of the SWCRS Event Communications System technically would allow aid station volunteers to connect directly with net control operators in the future in cases where radio resources are not available.
That’s where the focus will be.
And still, if you ask the operators what stood out, most won’t start with coverage maps or equipment lists.
They’ll talk about the experience.
An aid station glowing in the middle of the night. A folding table covered in whatever food made it out there. Runners arriving exhausted, sometimes quiet, sometimes talkative, always pushing forward.
Long stretches of stillness, broken by short bursts of radio traffic, and at times hours of constant chatter.
A relay operator watching the sun come up over a ridge-line after a night of passing messages back and forth.
Moments that don’t feel like logistics. Moments that feel like being part of something.
Next year, the race will evolve, but not in the way many expected. The course will run in reverse, changing the flow of the event and how runners experience it. A new 100-mile component will also bring in additional participants, expanding the scope without reducing the challenge.
From a communications standpoint, that means something important.
Everything learned this year carries forward, but the problem resets just enough to make it interesting again.Different flow. Different timing. Same terrain.
But the implications are real.
The most difficult RF terrain, the northern reaches of the course, won’t just be a challenge to solve in shortest windows. It will be where the race support teams stretch out the longest. The quietest, hardest-to-reach portions of the course will carry more of the load, for more time, with more runners moving through them as the finish goal shifts the opposite direction.
That doesn’t break the system. But it does mean it has to be better. More deliberate relay planning. Smarter placement. And more operators willing to step into those gaps and hold them.
Because nothing about this system is permanent.
When the race ends, the aid stations disappear, the course goes quiet, and the network dissolves back into silence, silently waiting to wake back up for its next purpose. What remains is the knowledge that, for a few days, it all worked because people showed up and made it work.
The Arizona Monster 300 doesn’t run on infrastructure alone. It runs on people who take a position somewhere along the course and become part of something that only exists for the duration of the event.
If you’ve done it, you know.
If you haven’t, it’s worth considering. Many operators this year were first-timers, and they walked away having learned something, contributed something real, and experienced a side of the event most people never see.
You don’t need perfect equipment. You don’t need to be an expert. What matters is being willing to participate, to think on your feet and improvise, to listen, to pass along a message when it needs to move, and to be the eyes and ears for the race when it matters most.
That’s how the system grows. That’s how it improves.
And that’s how a race that stretches across hundreds of miles of desert stays connected.
Next year, it will all get built again.
