{"id":999,"date":"2020-11-15T09:12:14","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T23:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=999"},"modified":"2021-02-03T08:38:57","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T22:38:57","slug":"loop-charity-cycle-challenge-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=999","title":{"rendered":"Loop Charity Cycle Challenge 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Formerly \u201cLoop the Lake\u201d Bike Ride, this event no longer goes around Lake Macquarie south of Newcastle \u2013 rather down the eastern side to Doyalson and returns. The event is run by the Rotary Club of Warners Bay with support from other nearby Rotary clubs. Proceeds from the event support the Cancer Council of NSW \u2013 Hunter, Camp Quality \u2013 Hunter, John Hunter Children\u2019s Hospital and Rotary Children\u2019s and Health charities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, John King was our Team\nleader for this event and thanks go to John for organising our\nparticipation. This year, the event ran on Sunday 10 March 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As usual, preparation begins a few\ndays before getting out the proposed UHF repeater for the event and\ngiving it a test run. For this one, we are using a pair of Tait\nTM8110\u2019s through a RF-Industries TX-RX Systems \u201cVari-Notch\u201d\ndiplexer and a collinear antenna fed by a bit of RG-8 grade Belden\n9913 coaxial cable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the very late afternoon \u2013\nactually, make that very early evening the day before, time to load\neverything into the vehicle including all welfare supplies for the\ntrip to the nominated repeater site. We nominate Heaton Lookout for\nthis one because it has a very good view over the Lake Macquarie\narea. We are jumping a few logistic hurdles at the moment, so we\nchose to take a trailer from Singleton instead of Newcastle for this\nevent. The trailer gets picked up and it is then time to make a bee\nline for Cessnock. It is now 2130 hours. From Cessnock, after\nstopping for a meat pie and a bottle of Powerade, it is on to\nKitchener then finally Sandy Creek Road then Heaton Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been a couple of years or so\nsince I have been up to Heaton Lookout this way. I see the road\ncondition has not improved. It is a lane and a half unsealed state\nforest road with numerous holes nearly big enough and deep enough to\nswallow a trailer. There is one school of thought in relation to\nthis \u2013 by leaving it like this, drivers will need to travel quite\nslowly and this itself should mean avoiding a road accident in a less\nthan ideal location \u2013 in theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arrival at the lookout was at 2300\nHours. Again, in years gone by I would be the only one up there at\nthis time of night. This year at least, there were three others up\nthere. It becomes a challenge and the executive decision then has to\nbe made: Setup the mast and antenna there and then or get up at 0530\nand do it then. Which disturbs the neighbours the least? I chose the\nlatter and hoped for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the day, there were nine of us\nfrom CREST-NSW who came to assist with members coming from Maitland,\nNewcastle, Prospect, Singleton and Sydney. We were up and running\nfor the first participant leaving the start\/finish at Speers Point\nPark at 0700 with the last in at around 1300 or so. This event also\nrequires us to temporarily plumb a few mobile radios into floating\nmarshal vehicles and the sweep bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the repeater is packed\nup, the return trip made to Singleton, vehicle washed, fuelled,\nunpacked and garaged \u2013 it is now 1930 Hours. A big day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Our setup at Heaton Lookout. In the background, just to the left of the trailer is Eraring Power Station near Dora Creek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

Formerly \u201cLoop the Lake\u201d Bike Ride, this event no longer goes around Lake Macquarie south of Newcastle \u2013 rather down the eastern side to Doyalson and returns. The event is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","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=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}