{"id":1019,"date":"2020-11-15T09:45:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2020-11-15T09:45:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:45:18","slug":"wollombi-wild-ride-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=1019","title":{"rendered":"Wollombi Wild Ride 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\nThe 2020 year will be remembered for the COVID-19 Pandemic and prior\nto now there was only a couple of jobs this year leading up to mid\nMarch 2020. Since then it has been somewhat of a lay period \u2013\npredominantly working bees. All of a sudden the 26 September is\nlooming and we have three jobs to do around the state all on the same\nday \u2013 this being the Newcastle to Dungog Bike Ride, the Blue\nMountains Adventure Race and of course the Wollombi Wild Ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a week out, we do some quick\nchecks on some packs to go out into the field to re-prove to\nourselves that everything is there \u2013 in terms of pegs, guy ropes,\ncoax cables and mast feet. Richard Akehurst from Newcastle gave\ntheir repeater trailer a once over including a service of the petrol\ngenerator and confirming the programming of the Icom repeater\nequipment in the trailer. For this task we configure to bend the\nsignal around the corner into Wollombi so to speak. All good there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Newcastle truck which is now at\nSingleton was also given a once over \u2013 in particular confirming\nantenna configurations for the task as well as antenna VSWR\u2019s. \nThursday 24\/9\/20 was spent dotting i\u2019s and crossing tee\u2019s on the\nmobile radio kits that were to be temporarily installed into\nvehicles. To be sure to be sure, we cabled up a 24V-13.8V reducer \u2013\ngood old Dick Smith Electronics brand switchmode type which we bought\nfor a RTA Big Ride back in 2006 and was still brand new in its\noriginal carton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the morning of Friday 25\/9\/20,\nJohn King and I originally went in two directions. John pre-arranged\nwith Laguna Fire Brigade to install a couple of radios into vehicles\nwhich saved time on the day of the event. I made a trip down to\nNewcastle to pick up the repeater trailer off Richard and then\nreturning it back to Singleton in preparation for the following\nmorning. I then hooked up Singleton\u2019s trailer to \u201cCairns 62\u201d \u2013\nthe 78 Series Troopcarrier then it was off to the Laguna area to\ncommence setting up for the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have done this event for quite\nsome years now \u2013 about thirteen actually and we have been using the\ncurrent network configuration for about the last nine years. We just\nrattle it off mechanically now because we know that it works. We put\nout three VHF-Midband\/UHF cross-band units on Boree, Yango and\nFinchley Tracks with the system hub on Moores Road. The system hub\nuses Tait T2020 Series II radios each fitted with a UIS-2000\nauxiliary board which for this event is configured as a UHF repeater\nwith VHF-Midband cross band output. A Mobile One 9dBi collinear\nmounted 13.5m above the ground is for the UHF repeater while a RF\nIndustries COD1 vertically enclosed dipole antenna at around 6m gets\nthe RF out on VHF-Midband. There is plenty of VHF-Midband coverage\nbetween the sites with overlap between all of them along the route. \nWe have 100% coverage of the area. The terrain in the Yengo National\nPark and trying to cover it using UHF is impractical. By the time\nthe Moores Road Hub site is established it is about 1800 hours, so\naround eleven and a half hours for day minus one for the two of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the day, around 300 participants\nlined up for the Wollombi Wild Ride. Coincidentally, the Wild Ride\nbrought with it wild weather \u2013 though not quite as wild as that\nexperienced last year. This year, I came better prepared bringing a\nchainsaw, bow saw and hand pruning saw. No limbs or trees came down\nthis year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having set up the masts and antennas\nat the outlying sites on day minus one, on the morning at around 0600\nit was time to start returning to these sites to deploy the\nelectronics, batteries and solar panels. A security chain and\npadlock is used to secure everything together. Finally, the\nequipment at Finchleys Lookout is put into service until around 1230\nor so when it is time to commence packing these outlying sites up. \nBy the time it is all done and we return to Singleton it is around\n1920 and Cairns 62 has notched up another 230km. So as you can see,\nit takes a pretty fair commitment to make an event like this happen\nin difficult terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
John King with the mast for the \u201cSouth\u201d site ready for standing. We are using a VHF-Midband groundplane made up out of some RF-Industries stainless steel parallel whips and Mobile One dipole base and lead kit. A RF Industries YB-6 Yagi 6 element points towards the hub site at a bearing of ten degrees magnetic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If there are any reminders to come\nout of doing such an event there are two that come to mind. The\nfirst is distance so members need to make sure that adequate vehicle\nfuel is carried. Fuel outlets aren\u2019t that plentiful in the area. \nThe second is the consequences of extremely windy weather, there is\nnothing like having your day spoilt because the road became blocked\nafter a tree fell across it. \n\n\n \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\"\"
Participants riding past Finchley Lookout at around the 37km mark with another 23km to go.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2020 year will be remembered for the COVID-19 Pandemic and prior to now there was only a couple of jobs this year leading up to mid March 2020. Since […]<\/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-1019","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\/1019","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=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}