HANOVER — While The Prouty, the annual bike ride that raises money for cancer research, spread out across the Upper Valley last Friday and Saturday, a small group of people sat in a kind of makeshift bunker in the back corner of the Richmond Middle School library.
Behind computer screens and radio gear, they kept in touch with people on the sprawling 100-mile course who were monitoring the riders. The backbone technology they deployed for this task doesn’t get much attention, but its users describe it as a critical resource.
They’re talking about amateur radio, best known by the catchier, if more obscure name, ham radio. Its appeal, for an event like The Prouty or for any other instance that requires reliable voice communication, is that it functions from just about anywhere, including where there’s no cell service. And its adherents are generally pretty public-spirited.
“We’re lucky. We have a lot of super-dedicated people,” Steve Goldsmith, who oversees communications at The Prouty, said on Friday, July 10, the first and less intensive day of the ride.
Goldsmith, a 60-year-old Charlestown resident, is one of six “technical specialists” in the New Hampshire Section of the American Radio Relay League, which calls itself the National Association for Amateur Radio. He and his fellow radio operators volunteer at The Prouty mainly to help out, but also to keep in practice, in case they’re called on in a widespread disaster, such as a hurricane or ice storm.
Spread out around the course were 50 amateur radio operators, some at the fixed “stop and go” or SAG points, and others assigned to be “rovers,” driving the course to be near riders. Every SAG is staffed with medical professionals, and many of the radio operators are also first responders of some kind — police, fire, EMTs.
For the past decade, the command center also has been able to track the location of all the radio operators, which makes it easier to send one of them to an incident.
“It’s super-important for us to know where everyone is in real time,” Goldsmith said. “If something goes horribly wrong, we need to get people there fast,” he added.
In one recent example, volunteers were able to reach a rider who’d had an accident near South Pomfret within 90 seconds, Goldsmith said. “We know who’s closest, we know who’s heading in the right direction,” he said.
The Prouty Ride is perhaps the Upper Valley’s largest outdoor event, both in terms of participants and the amount of ground it covers. Every year, cyclists ride up to 200 miles, starting and finishing in Hanover, and it has grown to include walkers, runners, rowers. This year’s event raised $12 million for cancer research and treatment at Dartmouth Cancer Center.
Goldsmith owned and ran a telecom company and is a co-founder of the Claremont MakerSpace. Many of the amateur radio operators also have technical backgrounds and are inveterate tinkerers.
That’s been true from the beginning of amateur radio, even before 1912, when Congress required amateur radio operators to be licensed. The rules require amateur radio use to be non-commercial. As amateurs, the operators have long pushed the boundaries of what radio can do.
“Because we’re a bunch of experimenters, we’ll solve problems that industry doesn’t want to tackle,” Dave Colter, who has volunteered at The Prouty for 40 years, said.
Ham radios operate on a band of frequencies larger than any radio spectrum outside the U.S. military, he said. Their operators often develop sophisticated technical chops. They bounce radio signals off the moon, for example, and there’s an amateur radio on the International Space Station, which Earth-bound operators can communicate with, so long as the station’s overhead.
Even in a world where the internet makes immediate global communication relatively cheap and easy, amateur radio retains an appeal for people with an independent streak. It’s simpler, and even cheaper, and its capabilities are far-reaching.
“With less power than it takes to run my watch, I can send a signal anywhere in the world,” Goldsmith said.
“We’re not constrained by a lot of bureaucratic nonsense,” Colter, of Sunapee, said.
Aside from the technical constraints, volunteering is what gives amateur radio a sense of structure and purpose. Colter recounted how the hurricane of 1938 cut off communication to New Hampshire’s North Country. “Two or three hams walked into the governor’s office…and said, ‘Can we help you?'” Colter said.
As recently as 2017, amateur radio operators coordinated the initial disaster response to Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria, he said.
So The Prouty, which is designed in advance and has 700 or so volunteers, is a way to prepare for less constructive outcomes than funding cancer research.
“What we do with these events is good training for disasters,” Colter said. Every year, ham radio operators communicate across the country as practice, a field exercise to get a group of very “individualistic people” — Colter’s words — on the same page.
Colter, who’s 72, said he concerned that the amateur radio community in northern New England is aging out, but Goldsmith said he sees a lot of vigor, including among college students.
Events like The Prouty — including the Boston Marathon, which draws hundreds of radio operators, Colter said — continue to provide a focus. This weekend, many of the same operators are providing coverage for the Vermont 100 Endurance Race, which takes place on the Vermont side of the Upper Valley.
And many have a personal tie to The Prouty and its mission.
“There is not a person here who has not been touched by cancer,” Goldsmith said, speaking of both participants and volunteers. His wife is a survivor.
“We’ve all seen the care Dartmouth Hitchcock provides,” he said. “This is the least we can do.”
