Black Duck Creek, Haldon, Woodbine
Junction View, & Mt Sylvia

areas with emergency communications
 

The Lockyer Valley Amateur Radio Club has been asked to assist in getting emergency communications to people south of Mt Sylvia. In recent floods residents were cut off for four weeks with no phone or other communications and no access to roads leaving them stranded without medical aid, or food, and no income as no one could get to work or get produce to market.

In a meeting with residents at the Mt Sylvia School, Alan Shannon VK4SN, on behalf of the club,  proposed that the club help the local residents by organising and sourcing funding for a Citizen Band radio repeater. The club has recommended an emergency channel 5 UHF CB repeater located at a site that covers most of the area in need. 

It is recommended that residents have hand helds with a Dual Watch function so they can be used on a simplex channel for the area, while the radio checks Channel 5 every few seconds. Only in the case of emergency would channel 5 be actually used to contact persons out of the area for assistance when needed. Actual creek levels can be reported down the line when rain fills the creeks. 

On Saturday the 12^th of March 2011, Peter Davis VK4KHP, Allan Cridland VK4JAC and Alan VK4SN, attended the area for site tests. Peter had spent many hours with special software to locate the best possible position for the repeater location. Alan took one of the residents to the proposed repeater site, while Allan and Peter drove down into East Haldon and Black Duck Creek valleys.  Testing took place on UHF Ch 12 and excellent results were achieved from handhelds in the car back to the mobile rig using external antenna on Alans car.

The repeater will have better antennas and run a litte more power than our 5 watt tests which should result in excellent coverage over the entire area. Some residents may require an external antenna to access the repeater.

We have proved that our suggestion will work and now we can proceed with sourcing, funding, acquision, and installation of equipment. All this has yet to be finalised, but the ball is in motion with other persons and clubs offering to assist in this venture.

Update 13/4/11

All the quotes have been sent through to the residents spokesperson and they will contact the relevant persons to order and purchase the equipment. Funding from several sources will see a successful outcome.  Toowoomba Rotary donated a substantial amount of money to make the repeater a success.  ACMA has refused a channel 5 repeater due to its close location to the Cunninghams Gap one, but instead approving channel 8 for the Mt Sylvia area.

Update 19/6/2013

Some pictures of the finished repeater site.

The repeater is housed in the round tank with one solar panel on top.
The top two folded dipoles are for use with the repeater.
Optus obviously liked our chosen location as they have installed a mobile phone system.

Optus has a back up generator to recharge the batteries in the trailer below.
I was fortunate enough to turn up while the generator was being serviced.

The optus mobile phone setup.

Close up of the top two repeater antennas and the optus mobile panel.

(Pics by Alan, VK4SN)

Thanks to all those who helped along the way.