{"id":1011,"date":"2020-11-15T09:38:58","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2020-11-15T09:38:58","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:38:58","slug":"singleton-rotary-club-charity-bike-ride-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=1011","title":{"rendered":"Singleton Rotary Club Charity Bike Ride 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The second event for the Singleton Team for September 2019 is Singleton Rotary Club\u2019s Charity Bike Ride which is held in the Lake St Clair area. The event which partners with Singleton Council and Soft Cogs cycling group gives riders the choice of three routes: 16km, 48km and 75km. It doesn\u2019t matter which route they chose, there were hills in all of them. On the day, 172 participants were up for the challenge. Rotary members put on the barbeque as well as staffing various points as marshals and the Mt Olive Hall as the half way stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all of our events, it begins\nwith the preparation. John King had the Central Coast trailer sorted\nand fitted radios to two St John Ambulance vehicles the day before. \nThis saves work on the day which was great because I was still\nrunning around like a mad thing. John took the trailer and other\nrelated items out to the Mt Olive Hall, I took 62 with the gazebo, a\ncouple of chairs and our radio setup for use at the Lake St Clair\nRecreation area by Janice Lawrence. Our other members were Dylan\nLongworth who staffed a point on the road and new member Martin Gray\nwho assisted John at \u201cRide Control\u201d \u2013 the Central Coast\ntrailer. Unusually, Ride Control is located at the half way rest\nstop \u2013 not the Start\/Finish point since this is where the route\nmanager is also located due to availability of mobile phone coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The radio setup at Lake St Clair\nthis year was a modification to that of last year in that we used a\nself contained arrangement of Tait 2020 Series II radios \u2013\nVHF-Midband and UHF configured as a cross band unit as opposed to\nTait TM8250 radios used last year. The cross band guarantees\ncoverage across the lake to the high point on the climb which is\nsomewhat under a ledge with respect to the repeater site. With the\nA2000-UIS boards fitted to the T2020 Series II\u2019s, pressing the PTT\non either radio microphone causes both to go into transmit whereas\nwith the TM8250, only that radio goes into transmit. The nicety is\nthat when Janice is talking on the radio, I also get to hear what she\nis saying on the cross banded radio. The VHF radio was set to Ch77\nand for this event, usually dust off an Icom IC-F30G portable. \nDespite this handheld being fitted with the standard midband \u201crubber\nattenuator\u201d, the signal into the cross band was loud and clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were three Rotary sweep\nvehicles fitted with UHF radios. We have seen it before, commercial\nradios do not operate successfully from cigarette lighter sockets not\ndesigned to be \u201cpower sockets\u201d. Luckily, we had Plan B which\nwere Kenwood TK3170 portables fitted with SMA-BNC adapters, magnetic\nbase and 4.5dBi antennas. Rotary Club officials, St John Ambulance\nand ourselves all made use of our local UHF82 repeater in standard\nBig Ride fashion. Our VHF Midband CH75 was a back channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our setup at Lake St Clair \u2013 3m square gazebo, 300W solar panel also used with our repeater trailer, green tarp to keep the sun and heat out (taken out of 62) and our mast with Tee bar. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

St John Ambulance had one minor to\nattend to at the Start\/Finish for the day. Other than that, the sun\nwas shining and we all had a great day. Perfect for riding given the\ntime of year, maybe a tad warm, but no wind.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On VHF Midband, we are using our standard groundplane using Mobile One dipole base and lead kit and RFI SW1 stainless steel whips. On UHF, we are using a Mobile One 4.5dBi collinear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Janice Lawrence at Lake St Clair with Tait T2020 Series II cross band repeater.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 75km riders are about to get a start.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the highest point along the route which overlooks Lake St Clair. The rock behind Cairns 62 is marked with paint \u201cPhone\u201d, the only point out here where mobile phone reception is available.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A view across the lake towards the recreation area where the start\/finish point is located. The signal path for the VHF Midband handheld is around 3 km or so.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The road either side of this high point is steep enough to allow the riders to gain a fair bit of speed. If there is going to be a spill, this is a good location for it. Luckily, no spills though a number of riders were reporting cramps on the return run.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second event for the Singleton Team for September 2019 is Singleton Rotary Club\u2019s Charity Bike Ride which is held in the Lake St Clair area. The event which partners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-operations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}