The Gippsland Rally, held August 26~27th, is one of the most operator resource hungry events WICEN Vic has on its calendar. The event is staged out of Heyfield approximately 200kms east of Melbourne and hosts rally cars from the ARC Australian Rally Championships) as well as the VRC (Victorian Rally Championships). The VRC cars only run on the Saturday, making it the busiest of the two days. Over the course of the event, we logged over 700 messages, at a rate of 2~3 per minute. The rate of messaging means a lot of action and required a lot of radio operators.
The volunteer sector across all organisations has been hit hard since covid. WICEN Vic is no different, needing volunteer radio operators as events come back post the pandemic. With 20 plus operators required for the Saturday, an urgent call was placed to several AR clubs. To those clubs who acknowledged our call, we thank you. An additional eight operators made themselves available. To the WICEN Vic members who where able to attend, we also thank you for your availability and commitment.
Rallies at this level are well resourced. There is the Rally Safe system that is world class providing in car telemetry for locational tracking, excessive G Force notification and roll over notification. All this in real time with two-way messaging to the car. There is a commercial radio system made available to all officials, run out of rally HQ, not to mention mobile phone coverage, data and voice is pretty good across the entirety of the course.
So why have WICEN there? For us, the event is used as a training exercise. Operators train in conditions less than ideal and in locations not chosen for best radio propagation. They send messages that need to be short and precise and often with urgency. They learn to concentrate when it’s noisy, they’re tired and the information mostly is foreign to them. It’s like listening to your significant other when the kids are fighting, and they want to discuss your plan for next month. Operators learn what equipment is needed or not needed to take to ensure a quick deployment of their station. They also learn and participate in off road driving (in some cases) and being prepared with food, water and shelter. All this is serious business because a failure to deliver could have consequences we’d rather not face.
The other reason WICEN is there is as a backup. On several occasions over the two days WICEN was called upon as the primary communications between Rally Base and the checkpoint. Notification of the change is made in real time, when the primary communications fail and WICEN becomes the primary. Sounds a little like why WICEN exists. With this all being said, you can see the parallels between this event and the relationship between the emergency management services and WICEN Vic. While their systems are more robust than ever, continuing investment in the Victorian communications network continues to ensure WICEN is there to back fill gaps if and when needed.
What a WICEN trained operator brings to the table is far more than their AR skills. Some AR operators like to build, and others buy. Some like DX and others working satellites. WICEN trained operators would more easily be able to walk into an EOC (Emergency Operations Centre) or an ERC (Emergency Relief Centre) and form part of the communications network. They have experience working under pressure, in noisy and less than ideal environments and learn to remain calm and work the problem. WICEN needs more operators who are willing to train and give a little of their time annually in case of being called upon.
The Gippsland Rally will be running in 2024 in Heyfield and our next event is the Stockman’s Rally Sunday 29th October. If you’re interested in attending the Stockmans, or would like further information about getting involved with WICEN Vic, get in touch as we’d love to hear from you.
