At this year's Regatta, I was stationed on a safety launch on Friday, the Attager med tent on Saturday, and the Lot 4 med tent on Sunday.
This year, I brought the following radios:
On Friday, I mostly used the Motorola's speaker mic, but it got muffled by my backpack and the vest because of how I placed it. I switched to an earpiece for Saturday and Sunday, and that was an improvement.
On all days, I parked at the Alewife T station. At $9/day, this was much cheaper than the $30 that Harvard University was charging to use their parking lots close to the course. In total, each day was ~$14 ($9 for parking, $4.80 for round-trip Red Line tickets).
Safety Launches had to be on-station at the MIT boathouse by 6:00 AM. I underestimated how long the walk from the Kendall Square Red Line stop would take, so I was about 15 minutes late, but we didn't end up launching until around 7:00 AM anyways. My boat had a pilot, a lifeguard, and myself. The pilot had a commercial radio on the emergency services channel.
Friday was the coldest day, and it was also the day I wore the least layers. This turned out to be fine, but next year I'll check the weather, because Saturday's layers would have been perfect for Friday, especially on the water. The sun didn't start warming my station until around 9:00 AM. I wore layers expecting this year's volunteer premium to have sleeves and be more of a jacket like 2023's premium, but it was a vest instead.
Friday is mostly a practice day, so there wasn't much for my launch to do. The only traffic I gave to net was asking for bathroom breaks, and coordinating pickup of the launch's AED, which wasn't available at the start of the day.
At the end of the day, River Control swept the river upstream, and even-numbered safety launches were cleared back to MIT. As I was on an odd-numbered safety launch, I remained on position until the sweep boat turned around, which was delayed on Friday due to late launches from an upstream boathouse. Once my launch was cleared, we went back to the MIT boathouse and returned our gear, and were secured by Net.
Land-based medical stations started at 7:00 AM. I again underestimated the walk from the Harvard Square T stop to Attager row. Like Friday though, this wasn't a big deal.
The primary job of a medical tent is to be available in case of emergency. There were three hams and a number of clinicians at the medical tent. Every so often, one ham and two medical volunteers would go on a walk down to the Eliot bridge or up to Lot 4 and the Henderson boat house. The rest of the team stayed at the tent.
The main thing I had to respond to on Saturday was spectators putting themselves into dangerous positions on and around the Eliot bridge, mainly sitting on the edge or standing under the arch.
Sunday was similar to Saturday. I was on station around 7:30 AM, and spent the day going on walks with medical volunteers, and responding to calls as directed by Net. Lot 4 wasn't marked on the operations map I had, so I needed some direction from Net to actually find the tent.
On both Saturday and Sunday, River Control swept after the last boat of the last race, meaning that stations were securing well ahead of the expected 6:00 PM. On Saturday, my station at Attager was secure at 5:00 PM, and on Sunday I secured at around 4:30 PM.
This year, I forgot to bring a battery bank for my phone charger on Friday, so I wasn't able to charge my phone and it almost died before I got back to Alewife. On Saturday and Sunday, I brought my solar charger, which was also well-received by the medical teams.
Lot 4's tactical callsign is confusing, as it's next to parking lot 4, but that isn't marked on any of the maps outside of the one in the program. Making it more confusing, the tent is directly next to FALS Dock 5, and the tent itself is Medical Tent 5. In future years, it may be better to either mark the tent better on the map, or modify the tactical callsign.