Beargrease Amateur Radio Coalition

BARC stands for the Beargrease Amateur Radio Coalition. We have a website! We are a group of amateur radio operators that perform health and welfare traffic for the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. I was the president of the organization until this year when I gave it up as I just didn't have the time or motivation to continue to do a good job at it.

I am working on new software to keep track of the teams. The software is written primarily in C and runs on X-Windows (it will run on Linux or on a virtual PC in Windows). It utilizes a MySQL database to store all of the data.

The advantages of the new software over the old spreadsheets is huge:

¨ We can now have a virtually unlimited number of mushers, and can change this number with ease in the program.

¨ We can now have a virtually unlimited number of checkpoints, and can change this number with ease in the program.

¨ Multiple copies of the program can be running at the same time on different PCs and call all access the database at the same time. This is useful for net control to have more than one PC running at the same time if they want. Checkpoints with internet connectivity can also now view (and modify if we want) the database from their own computer.

¨ The marathon and mid-distance races can now be combined into one program—no more shuffling between programs.

¨ Road crossings can now be added and times entered for them, enhancing musher tracking and time predictions.