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Ham radio enthusiasts who help keep the NYC Marathon running smoothly
‘If the phones are down, the hams are up.’ Amateur radio operators play a variety of roles at the Marathon.
The race relies on a small army of volunteers, who do everything from staffing the water stations at every mile marker and making sure runners don’t get lost to offering medical expertise. As well as chasing down people with overly extravagant costumes, however, ham radio also stands ready to play a second, more critical role: providing a reliable and resilient backup method of communications if primary channels go down for whatever reason. As Katzovicz explains, enthusiasts come up with all manner of uses for their little corner of the electromagnetic spectrum: “The hobby itself is really, really, incredibly broad and encompasses a lot of different parts of science and technology.
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