WICEN cover for Rally of Melbourne

As a training exercise, Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network (WICEN Vic.) Inc. provided safety and logistics communications for the 2004 Rally of Melbourne on the weekend of 2nd and 3rd of October.

The Rally of Melbourne is the yearly culmination of Australian Rally Championships, and took place in the forests between Toolangi and Warburton, with Chirnside Park as the Rally HQ for over 70 rally cars.

Over 40 WICEN members were deployed in teams of up to seven operators to each of the nineteen stages.
They handled traffic over the two days on 6 and 2m VHF, 70 cm UHF and 80m HF reporting of start, passing and finishing times for safety purposes, as well as the handling of scoring traffic using VHF & UHF packet to Rally Headquarters and
Media Centre. The finishing scores were relayed out to various spectator points and available in printed form, as well as posted on the Internet.

As a result, the finishing details of competitive cars were available to Rally HQ and the public in minutes after the cars finished at the various stages. This is only the second time WICEN have redistributed scores received at Rally HQ to other locations, and the first time the scores have simultaneously been available on the Internet.

Due to the hilly nature of the area the team had to use of a number of repeaters: Mt. Gordon VK3RTN on 6m (translated to 2m ); the Kinglake (VK3RMN), Mt. Ritchie (VK3RWP), and VK3RCR (Mt. Dandenong) repeaters on VHF; and Mt. St. Leonard on UHF.

In addition to the voice repeaters, a number of digipeaters and a cluster controller were set up to provide a path for the packet traffic. The Rally event went well, and although some minor hiccups were experienced due to changing conditions, the organisers are looking back on a very successful event.

Further information on the event is available at
http://203.36.211.33/2004/nov/rom2004/

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

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