Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

Location: Otari School and neighbourhood (no parking in school)
Time: 1800 to 2100

AREC will be providing comms for this exercise which will be similar to the Navigation and Radio SAREX held 6 June (see below) but on a smaller scale. This time the training is firmly focused on suburban search. Contact John Yaldwyn ZL4JY if interested in helping with comms for this event (limited numbers required).

Operating from the Te Marae o Tane Information Centre at the Otari-Wilton’s Bush Reserve this evening event provided training for Land SAR Wellington in navigation and communications. The venue was kindly made available by the Wellington City Council.

The SAREX kicked off at 1700 with John ZL4JY, Dick ZL2TGQ, and John ZL2HD on site. Operations on VHF used the Wrights Hill EE band LandSAR repeater maintained by AREC and a Police ESB band portable repeater deployed on nearby Tinakori Hill. Two Icom F110s were used at base. HF was also established to give the teams HF practice with an Icom F7000 and autotune antenna setup for 5680 kHz. Event logging was maintained by AREC using IMAN.

Event Manager Rowena Johnstone talking to a team on VHF.

IMAN is the incident management software that LandSAR Wellington uses for search operations. It is the alternative to paper based systems and works on both stand alone and networked computers.

We now have a Google Calendar tracking Events @ The Wellington VHF Group.

This has great potential - keep an eye on it for upcoming events and for those who use Gmail (etc) already, you can integrate this into your own Google view.

Updated: We also were mentioned in an article in the Upper Hutt Leader on 4 March 2009. Click to view a scan of the article.

8 members of Wellington VHF Group, assisted by 6 members of Hutt Valley Amateur Radio Club, assisted Hutt City's 'Leisure Active' and Upper Hutt City Councils' 'Activation' groups with Bike the Trail, a scenic fun bike ride between Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt, and Hikoikoi Reserve in Petone, Lower Hutt, this morning.

The 'Bike the Trail' route. The full route is 24km long; an abbreviated course was available starting in Stokes Valley.

This was a weekend SAREX designed to test comms on the South Coast, as well as the ability of the teams to handle the conditions! And with the "10 Year Storm" going on, it was a test.

A lot of work had gone in over the week before to get the new cross band repeaters built, as you would have read in Q-Bit. These were installed on Mt Misery on the Saturday morning. The base was set up and the teams dispatched.
We did a HF radio test with a Pulsar, and learnt a few things about getting wet.

The exercise was great fun and valuable. Thanks to the team for an interesting weekend, and most of us got a ride in a police 4x4 up into project Westwind, which should have been called project blasting freezing southerly!. Just think of the teams that spent the night out on the coast...Good idea to be a ham in the AREC team at base.

73

John ZL2HD

One of the new cross-band repeaters on display at the July General Meeting of the Wellinton VHF Group. Image by ZL1VMF.

Updated 19 July

There is an overnight SAR exercise being planned for the weekend of 26/27 July. A reminder that registrations are due 19 July.

The Annual General Meeting of New Zealand Land Search and Rescue Incorporated was held in Wellington on Saturday 29th September. The Minister of Police, Hon Annette King, opened meeting with Deputy Commissioner, Rob Pope, representing the Police.

Attending for AREC were Jeff Sayer, ZL4JS, AREC National Director and John Yaldwyn, ZL4JY, AREC Area 2 Manager.

A family tramping party headed in the Tauherenikau intending to stay overnight at either Cone or Tutuwai, to return Tuesday afternoon. After failing to return by next day and with a significant spike in the river flow the Westpac helo was tasked with one Police SAR Squad observer to search the area. The missing party were located just as the Westpac lifted off from Camp Kaitoke. With the Mt Climie SAR repeater temporarily off the air I sought permission from DoC to use their Cone ESB repeater as an alternative channel and made arrangements for programming SAR radios.

Wellington Land SAR held a Dog SAREX in the 12,000 acre Terawhiti Station behind Makara and out to the remote southeast coast of Wellington.

Attending were:

Brain Fearnley ZL2BRF
Dave Walker ZL2BHE
Rick Smith ZL2TVY
Tom Clarke ZL2TDD
John Yaldwyn ZL4JY

VHF operation was established on ESB58 using a Police portable repeater deployed by 4WD and an AREC Icom F110 base. VHF was used exclusively with teams and the Westpac helicopter on the same channel.