Behind the Mic: SWCRS Volunteer Comms at the 2026 Easy Peasy Lemmon Squeezy

Every Saturday morning this summer, while most of Tucson was still asleep, a small crew of SWCRS volunteers was already climbing Mt. Lemmon Highway — not on bikes, but in trucks and lawn chairs, setting up radios at mile markers so that Tucson Tri Girls (TTG) could safely run the 2026 Easy Peasy Lemmon Squeezy (EPLS26) series, a set of structured rides up the mountain for bike enthusiasts from across the Tucson area. The series ran six Saturdays in all, starting small on June 20 with just one operator at the start line and another following the SAG vehicle by radio — no formal Net Control yet, and no ECS report on file for that first week. By the time the season wrapped, we’d grown into a full eleven-station net covering hundreds of riders a week. Here’s the debrief.

The Operators

Ten SWCRS members staffed stations across the six-session series:

Callsign	Name
WSNF474	Michael Figueira
WROK372	David Paige
WRVF452	Mark Goudin
WRNR761	Andrew Peck
WRCU527	Darren Carlow
WQVS960	David Adriaanse
WSCN276	Jerry Adams
WSID367	Michael McIntyre
WRPN676	Larry Elliott
WSAY207	Ajay Spicer
WROG400	Jeffery Fuller

Plus the SAG-1 and SAG-2 mobile teams who relayed rider counts from the road all series long.

The Setup

Every session ran the same reliable net architecture:

Channel	Freq (MHz)	Use
5151 550	462.5500	Primary Net
Lemmon 650	462.6500	Primary Net
Geology Relay	462.5750	Portable repeater, staged at Geology Vista as needed
TAC 675	462.6750	Simplex
Tucson 600	462.6000	Backup

Net Control anchored at Geology Vista (MP-14.0) most weeks, with aide stations spaced out along the climb — Start Line, Molino Vista/Basin, Gordon Hirabayashi, Seven Cataracts, Middle Bear, Rose Canyon Lake, Bigelow Palisades, and Cookie Cabin at the top — plus two SAG vehicles shuttling supplies and riders, watching the road, and coordinating with net control as needed providing an awareness to event volunteers that had previously not been available.

Session by Session

Session 1 — June 20 (informal start)

No net report on file for this one — the net was barely a net yet. One operator held the start line and another tailed the SAG vehicle by radio, relaying what he could. No Net Control, no aide stations, just two guys with a couple radios following the event around.

Session 2 — June 27

The first week we ran a real net. 53 log entries, 42 comms, 12 stations staffed. Riders were tracked cleanly from the start line through Seven Cataracts, where the tally closed out at 84 riders checked in. Net Control (WQVS960) ran a tight, methodical net — dispatching Molino Vista to correct its position mid-morning and keeping ack’d traffic (42 of 42 logged messages) essentially perfect.

Session 3 — July 11

The busiest single day of the series by log volume: 114 entries, 106 comms. Rider counts climbed past 99 for the day. Net Control (WRNR761) kept up with a steady stream of rider calls from Molino Vista, Gordon Hirabayashi, Seven Cataracts, and Geology Vista simultaneously — a real test of net discipline that the team passed cleanly.

Session 4 — July 18

The toughest weather day. Rain moved in up top, riders turned around rather than descend in the wet, and — memorably — half the printed rider roster ended up riding down the mountain in a support vehicle instead of staying at the start line, forcing the team to reconstruct headcounts on the fly. Only 37 riders logged for the day, but the operators handled the curveball well and opened a logistics resource request to track down the missing list.

Session 5 — July 25

95 log entries, 90 comms, and a nice bit of field engineering: Molino Vista deployed a Yagi mid-morning to punch through a weak signal spot. Seven Cataracts confirmed 96 riders through, with counts continuing to climb at Bigelow Palisades into the late morning.

Session 6 — August 1 (Finale)

The biggest and longest day of the series — the full climb to Cookie Cabin at the summit. Rider counts topped 140 at the upper stations (143 through Seven Cataracts, 133 through Middle Bear), with 77 riders confirmed finishing at Cookie Cabin. The session also produced the only formal resource request of the series: Geology Vista/Relay flagged low water supplies at the Cookie Cabin finish line, and the request was fulfilled — a good real-world test of the logistics workflow working as designed.

What the Volunteers Said

We collected feedback from station operators after the series wrapped, and the theme was consistent: the net worked, and people had fun running it.

Michael Figueira, who ran Net Control at Geology Vista Relay during Session 4, called it out directly:

“The Geo Vista relay was awesome. Especially on the final day where we were the most spread out.”

His one suggestion — worth taking into next year — was staffing Net Control with two operators instead of one, since “a second set of eyes seemed very helpful” on the busiest days.

David Paige, who bounced between Start Line and Seven Cataracts across multiple sessions, highlighted the value of the repeater network on the toughest week:

“Especially on week 6, we provided vital communications to allow redistribution of supplies at the aid stations moved up the highway. This would otherwise have been more challenging.”

He also flagged a real coverage gap — his handheld only worked reliably at either end of the Seven Cataracts area, with even a few feet of movement making a difference — useful data for antenna placement next time. And he summed up the volunteer experience simply: “I had a lot of fun finally putting my GMRS license to use in a real-world situation.”

Mike McIntyre, who worked Bigelow Palisades, reported the one equipment hiccup of the series — a temporary noise source at his station — solved cleanly by shifting frequencies. He rated the net’s support for the event a perfect 10 out of 10.

Takeaways for Next Year

• Coverage held up. Across six sessions and roughly a dozen stations each week, there were no missed emergency messages and only minor, quickly-resolved RF issues (Bigelow noise, a marginal spot at Seven Cataracts).
• Logistics tracking earned its keep. Resource requests of the series, including a missing rider roster in Session 4 and the water shortage in Session 6, were caught, logged, and closed out through the net rather than becoming bigger problems on the mountain.
• Staffing Net Control with two operators on the higher-volume weeks is worth planning for.
• The portable Geology Relay repeater was the MVP piece of gear all series, repeatedly cited as the thing that made the spread-out stations actually work as one net.

Thanks to everyone who gave up a Saturday morning — WSNF474, WRNR761, WROK372, WRVF452, WRCU527, WQVS960, WSCN276, WSID367, WRPN676, WSAY207, and everyone on SAG duty — for keeping riders and volunteers safe on the mountain all summer.

Photos from the series: SWCRS EPLS26 Photo Album