About Us

REACT has grown in many ways since its inception in 1964. Our members originally monitored CB channel 9 from their homes spread around our city and county. In the mid 1980's, we utilized a commercial radio service called General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). For many years motorists knew that if they needed assistance, all they had to do was to call on channel 9 and REACT would be there, loud and clear, to help. With our GMRS repeater on the Northeast side of San Antonio and in the Canyon Lake area, we had reliable radio communications multi-county-wide. In 2010 we replaced the GMRS repeater near Canyon Lake with an Amateur Radio Repeater on 444.450. In late 2011, the last remaining repeater was removed from service by the tower company who had been donating the space to REACT since 1987.

Several factors, including the decline in popularity of CB radio, spurred a change in direction and operating procedures of our group. With the strength and unity of our team, we began to focus on our role as a mutual aid organization. Our membership began pursuing amateur radio as a communications resource in addition to the public frequencies we had always used. We also formed relationships with local government agencies, disaster response agencies and amateur radio clubs to let them know we were capable and ready to assist during times of disaster.

Today, most of our team’s routine operations are conducted on Amateur Radio. We are capable of operating on almost all HF, VHF and UHF amateur radio, public safety, and business bands. Our Amateur Call Sign is K5HCR.

Hill Country REACT was formed by combining two existing REACT Teams from Bexar County and Comal County into a single Team after their members voted to merge in 2004.

We have members in the team residing in four counties (Bexar, Comal, Kendall, and Guadalupe), primarily the area from San Antonio (Bexar county) to the north, northwest and northeast.

Today, you will find REACT members belonging to almost every other ham club and organization in the area, and in some cases, serving on their board of directors. Anytime you find a public service event using ham radio communications, you are likely to find a few REACT members participating, even when REACT isn't in charge of the event.

While REACT has a well known reputation in public service, coordinating events such as parades, walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons, triathlons, run-a-thons, etc., they also are well known for their disaster preparedness training and ability to respond during emergencies. REACT members train together as a Team, by using public service events and drills to practice working together and improving our skills in communicating between ourselves and other stations. REACT does not believe in waiting until the emergency is upon us before teaching our members how to be better prepared to respond in a timely manner.

Our current responsibilities can be summed up in the following three categories.

Local / Area Emergencies: Hill Country REACT is prepared and available to assist in local emergencies in and around the San Antonio metro area. We have a well trained volunteer base ready to serve on short notice. Once set up on site, we can operate self sufficiently for extended periods. We have responded to requests for assistance in neighboring counties, especially Bandera, Comal, Kendall and Guadalupe. Our Team is familar with, and is well known by, other emergency service organizations in the area, which helps smooth interaction during a real disaster or emergency operation.

Community Service: We maintain our skills and equipment through regular community service events. Often this entails deploying a mobile command center to the event site, setting up our equipment, providing communications assistance during the event, then dismantling the system and returning the equipment to standby. We have responded to requests for assistance in neighboring counties, especially Bandera, Bexar, Kendall and Guadalupe.We are experiernced with coordinating the communications for parades, bike-a-thons, run-a-thons and similar events.

MAKE A DONATION TO REACT. Use the DONATE button shown in the left margin to use PayPal and your major credit card to make a cash donation to REACT. We'll put your funds to work in supporting the mission of providing communications support to our communities.

Membership Application may be downloaded from here in Adobe PDF format.