North Anglia Raynet Local News

News From North Anglia Raynet

10th September 2005 - A good turnout from the members provided coverage for the Kidney Research Horse Ride in the Sandringham area on Sunday 9th October. There were around 100 riders taking part in various courses across the estate. St John Ambulance had a couple of minor injuries to deal with but thankfully nothing too major. We provided a good 2m net from a short mast mounted antenna. We used the groups crossband talkthrough unit to good effect and provided a link from 2m to 70cm to allow local control of the main net. Thank you to all who assisted.

8th September 2005 - Thank you to all the members that turned out last Sunday to provide some good communications on the Wissey Half Marathon. There were around 200 runners on a very hot day. Our user service St John Ambulance were kept busy at the end! We ran the usual 2m net and control was established for the bulk of the event from a high spot using around 10 W ERP. An additional drinks station was also put in due to the heat and this was manned after the first one was closed- a quick dash and navigation exercise for our operator.

31st Aug 2005 - Kevin G1SCQ attended a meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King's Lynn to check location of equipment and discuss possible operational procedures. It was agreed to test the antenna on a 6 monthly basis and hopefully stay in touch with any emergency procedures where we may be involved to provide secondary communications.

28th July 2005 - Thank you to all members that turned out to provide communications for St John Ambulance at the annual Sandringham Charity Flower Show. Crowds were large even though the weather was poor. Several incidents were dealt with but the lack of heat meant the usual heat related problems were not encountered. We provided a 2m simplex net and also controlled the St John PMR net. Thanks to Forest Heath Raynet that provided 2 operators and a very cosy control caravan!

20th June 2005 - We covered communications on the 2 day long distance endurance horse ride on Sat 18th and Sun 19th June. User service was St John Ambulance who thankfully had few incidents to deal with. The weekend was the hottest of the year so far with bright sunshine over much of the weekend. Temperatures hovered in many places at 30C or above! We set up a dual band portable antenna at around 6m AGL and provided a good 2m net to the mobiles over some quite difficult terrain. Hand held coverage was also acceptable within a few miles of base at Courtyard Farm, Ringstead. Thanks to all who were able to assist.

15th June 2005 - Kevin G1SCQ attended a table top exercise on the invite of the Norfolk Emergency Planning Department on Wednesday 15th June. This was the third in a series of exercises run in Norfolk to facilitate the creating of generic plans to deal with a particular situation that could occur. It was a very full day and the importance of good communications once again became apparent at dealing with any rapidly evolving situation.

21st May 2005 - We provided a good coverage net for a horse ride in the Syderstone area on Saturday 21st May. Luckily Control at start/finish was on one of the higher RF spots in the area and 5w VHF covered it well to mobiles. We also ran as a trial the groups recently built in-band wide split UHF talkthrough box. This was run on a makeshift antenna system but worked reasonably well with few problems to the majority of the area. For RX we used a PMR 1/2 wave at about 5m agl and TX was a 70cm magmount on top of a caravan!! RF output was 3W and few desense issues were experienced. We have had some aerials and fittings kindly donated from John G0SFQ and in the near future we should have a more robust portable aerial system to trial.

21st May 2005 - Thanks to all who turned out for the coverage of the Samaritan Cycle ride on Sunday 15th. We had good comms on a 2m net across the area. Talkthrough was used to link from the control site back to start/finish area to keep them up to date with events.

10th April 2005 - Thank you to all who were able to assist today at the Horse Ride at Sandringham. There were a couple of minor incidents to deal with but thankfully no injury or problem resulted. There was even a visit from HRH fresh from the wddding the day before!
We manged to give the groups new cross band/in band UHF repeater unit a trial as well and apart from some problems with through audio levels it performed well. Once I have the problem resolved we will have to test it on a wider basis and sort out some aerials for it so it will be self contained.

3rd April 2005 - With effect from Wednesday 6th April the regular Wednesday night radio net will take place on a trial basis on the GB3KY 2m repeater. This is on a frequency of 145.7125MHz with -600KHz shift. This is to facilitate coverage and participation. The procedures are as follows:

Net control will remain as currently.
The net controller (G4OZG normally) will call in the usual manner and take check ins.
Once the bulk of the check-ins have taken place, the net will proceed. The Net Controller will issue any news items/requests either in person or by passing to Group Controller or deputy.
Once this has taken place the net controller will contact each station in turn to take any items/feedback.
The stations will pass back to control - NOT to individual stations as is the usual case on a repeater.
Please leave a gap between overs ie the "pip" to allow the timeout on the repeater to reset.
The gap will also allow other stations not taking part within the net to exchange traffic/call.
Please remember this is a repeater for all and not exclusively a Raynet one.
If the repeater is active and cannot be used for Raynet traffic then the net will revert to 145.200 MHz.

The trial will be reviewed on an ongoing basis and is supported by the GB3KY repeater keeper.

3rd April 2005 - On Thursday 31st March G1SCQ attended the formal launch of the Norfolk Resilience Forum at Norfolk Police OCC at Wymondham. Following the implementation of the Civil Contingencies Legislation this has put emergency planning and resilience on a more formal footing. Much of the Act puts legal responsibilities on authorities and agencies (responding organisations) to act in a uniform and prescribed manner. Raynet is tied into many of the responders plans and as such will need to be formaly involved in any plans and exercises. More information will follow as the procedures start to evolve across the county and beyond. For those wanting more in depth information please takea look at http://www.ukresilience.info

28th March 2005 - We are now starting to get User service requests in to assist with communications with their public duties. Please check out the Diary page and if you are able to help let myself or the Wednesday night net on 2m know. These are ideal opportunities to test out equipment and yourself - and enjoy the fresh air!

16th February 2005 - North Anglia Raynet were called on Sunday 13th February at 14:30 to help provide communications by the Emergency Planning unit based at King's Lynn to support the issue of a Precautionary Evacuation Notice in the North West Norfolk Coastal area following predictions of very high surge tides. Within an hour 6 members were up and running and links were established between control rooms and with mobiles within the risk areas. Other members were placed on standby and other groups offered assistance should the situation develop. As the situation developed a rest centre was established at Hunstanton and again Raynet put links in place to communicate from handhelds within the rest centre, using talk-through units back to King's Lynn (15 mile RF path). The high tide passed without serious incident and all members were stood down at 22:30.

Thanks to all who assisted or offered assistance.

30th January 2005 - No news is good News. High tides and severe winter weather have so far passed us by in West Norfolk. I have received notice of a couple of new events to support St John in.This is posted on the diary page.

8th January 2005 - Happy New Year to all members and families.

31st October 2004 - Thanks to all members who attended the AGM on Monday 25th October. The commitee for year 2004/2005 remains the same as last year.