115 miles up the dragon and across the Cherohala Skyway. Sounds like a great ride for a motorcycle. This past weekend, over 300 people did it on bicycles!
I was one of the volunteers to provide support for these riders. I was one of six from the Blount County Emergency Radio Services group that volunteered. If you've been on this route, you'll know that very little of it has cell phone coverage, so our radios come in handy for communicating with the organizers of the event and the riders who have problems are happy to see us pull-up behind them to offer them support and gear.
This ride is particularly challenging for the ham radio team. The terrain makes communication difficult; we have to setup a temporary repeater and even then have spots where we cannot communicate with the officials at the start/finish line without relaying via some other ham on the course.
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