While the year has drawn to a close in terms of planned events, summer is the time which WICEN is typically activated so it is important to remain prepared for events.
WICEN will have a stand at the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club's Wyong Field Day on 22 February 2015. The more who volunteer, the shorter shifts can be.
WICEN has a twitter account: @wicennsw
A Barbeque for members - will be held today (Sunday) - here at Dural, commencing at midday. This follows the debrief specifically for those who took part in the recent search in the Kanangra Boyd National Park.
WICEN will have a stand at the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club's Wyong Field Day on 22 February 2015. The more who volunteer, the shorter shifts can be.
A Barbeque for members is planned for Sunday, 7 December here at Dural, commencing at midday. Those wishing to attend need to RSVP to operations@nsw.wicen.org.au by Thursday 4th December, to allow for catering.
While the WICEN year is drawing to a close, in that there are no more planned operational events for the year, it is worth noting that over the past few months WICEN has contributed 1700 hours to the community. This included providing tactical and safety communications to the VH-MDX search, supporting several fund raising walks and canoe events, including 800 hours for the Hawkesbury Canoe Classic, and supporting the search in the remote and rugged Kanangra-Boyd National Park, among others.
After 16 days of searching, of which WICEN was deployed for 15, the search for the bushwalker, Sevak Simonian was called off last Monday. WICEN established a station at Kanangra Tops in the Kanangra Boyd National park area, south of Jenolan, and 50 km by road from Oberon. WICEN provided specialist communications support to Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue Service and NSW Cave Rescue, National Parks, NSW Police, State Emergency Services, Rural Fire Service, and NSW Ambulance, using various non-Amateur VHF, UHF and HF channels.
Today marks the fourteenth day WICEN has been deployed on the search for a bushwalker missing from Kanangra Tops in the Kanangra Boyd National park area, south of Jenolan, and 50 km by road from Oberon. WICEN has been providing specialist communications support to Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue Service and NSW Cave Rescue, National Parks, NSW Police, State Emergency Services, Rural Fire Service, and NSW Ambulance, using various non-Amateur VHF, UHF and HF channels. Some teams have been inserted and extracted by National Parks helicopter, Lifesaver 1, and Firebird 225.
After a very busy weekend involving both SAREX and the Hawkesbury, commencing at first light on Monday, WICEN has been providing specialist communications support for the search for a missing person in extremely rugged terrain in the Kanangra Boyd National park area, south of Jenolan, and 50 km by road from Oberon. While two operators were sufficient early in the week, this has been expanded to four per day, as both the base and relay points are being staffed. Ten members have been involved so far, with most camping on-site.
WICEN continues to provide specialist communications support to search teams operating from Kanangra Walls near Oberon in NSW. As well as commercial VHF and UHF we are using commercial HF on 2, 3, 5, & 7 MHz for the teams that are in extremely remote locations. We have established an amateur repeater link using the 2M WICEN repeater at Chatswood back into Sydney which is being used to manage our tasking, people and resources out of Sydney. Thank you to those WICEN operators who have made themselves available in response to the WICEN email that went out on Tuesday.
WICEN NSW has been activated to provide specialist communications support to the VRA squads BWRS and Cave Rescue teams who are providing land search teams to NSW Police in the search for a missing bush walker in the Kanangra Walls area.
Despite flooding, including dramatic scenes of trains imitating submarines of the yellow variety; and sticky wet snow bringing down many tree branches to the west, WICEN was not activated.
SAREX is a search exercise involving the search for VH-MDX, the Cessna 210M "Turbo Centurion" which went missing in Barrington Tops, north of Port Stephens on Sunday, 9 August 1981. It will run from Friday 24th of October for set-up, to Sunday the 26th. This involves the Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue Squad and NSW Police Rescue, among others.
