Submitted by VK2YJS on

WICEN NSW, is a communications support squad of the NSW Volunteer Rescue Association.

WICEN and the St. George Amateur Radio Society are jointly conducting a test of a temporary 70cm FM repeater at Mt. Bindo, on the Great Dividing Range, west of the Blue Mountains. This is to determine UHF coverage from the location.
The repeater VK2RAH is on 439.875 MHz, with the standard negative 5.0 MHz offset. No CTCSS tone is required or sent.
Amateurs with UHF FM radios in Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Tablelands, and further afield are encouraged to try out the repeater, and to send reports to: callback@sgars.org

WICEN NSW is providing assistance to WICEN ACT in the provision of communications support for the BMSC "National Capital Rally". This is being held to the west and south-west of Canberra, in the Uriarra and Tidbinbilla areas, next weekend. Further information, and the sign-up form is at: https://groups.io/g/vk1-reflect/message/1767

A remote training exercise will be conducted on January 9th and 10th, 2021. This will be conducted in small, physically distributed, teams, and include practising field operations.

Members have been experimenting with WINLINK and JS8CALL to pass text messages, on Monday evenings, supported by a Google Meeting.

WICEN has a weekly net, each Sunday evening. The main net is at 1800, and a secondary digital voice check-in net at 1830.
Today's uses the Chatswood 2m repeater, 147.150; followed by the (non-Amateur) Kurrajong VHF High-band repeater -R52 TAC 7.

Members are also encouraged to take advantage of the free courses offered by OEM at: https://www.emtraining.nsw.gov.au/

WICEN hopes to be at the CCARC Field Day at Wyong on February 28th, 2021.

Members are asked to regularly use their vrarescue.org email address. As of January 1st 2021 all WICEN emails will only be sent to the member's VRA email address.

For Facebook users, there is an official WICEN NSW page; and an informal national WICEN group.

WICEN ACT, part of CRARC, with info at: http://www.crarc.org.au

WICEN Victoria's weekly net is Tuesdays at 8:30 pm, on 3.6 MHz. Their website is: http://vic.wicen.org.au

Submitted by Julian Sortland VK2YJS, on behalf of the WICEN State Management Committee.