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

WICEN NSW will be conducting an informal Communications Exercise on the weekend of January 9th and 10th, and invites amateur radio clubs across New South Wales and ACT to participate.

WICEN will establish a base station at Little Bay, Sydney, with WICEN members across NSW setting up home or field stations as part of a wider exercise. Net control operators at Little Bay will monitor a number of frequencies, passing messages and accepting check-ins from WICEN members and other amateur radio operators.

Contacts from the wider amateur radio community, throughout the course of the exercise, will be greatly appreciated as these will help increase traffic, and simulate more realistic workloads for the exercise net control operators. Further details, including frequencies, can be found on the WICEN NSW website.

Members are asked to remain prepared for activation, as summer has traditionally been the time things have gone figuratively, or occasionally literally, wobbly.

WICEN and the St. George Amateur Radio Society are jointly conducting a test, using a 70cm FM repeater at Mt. Bindo on the Great Dividing Range. VK2RAH is on 439.875 MHz, with the standard negative 5.0 MHz offset. No CTCSS tone is required or sent. Coverage appears to be very good, so give it a go, and let callback@sgars.org know your results.

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 2 metre repeater, followed by the non-ham R52 TAC7 DMR system at Kurrajong.

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 is part of the Canberra Region ARC. Their website is: http://www.crarc.org.au

WICEN Victoria's weekly net is Tuesdays at 8:30 pm, on 3.6 MHz. The Baw-Baw Extreme is TBC for mid-April. Visit: http://vic.wicen.org.au

Finally, WICEN wishes members and listeners a Happy Hogmanay and New Year.

Submitted by Julian Sortland VK2YJS & AG6LE, on behalf of the WICEN State Management Committee.