EVENTS

Gawler Barossa Division of Australian Citizen Radio Monitors handle a wide range of events, from Car Parking (S.A. Police Trained), Motor Cycle Trials to Car Rallies (CAMS Trained). The club owns one simplex and three duplex private radio frequencies to perform these duties. The division also has access to another two simplex and three duplex private frequencies, if required, from other South Australian Divisions. Here is a brief outline of the duties that we perform:

Car Parking
Car parking tasks are sometimes simple, controlling the parking of a couple hundred cars to parking as many as two to three thousand. Obviously, bigger events require more personnel. With car parking, we prefer to have more people than required so helpers can have a break to have lunch and even to get a look around the events, which are invariably interesting.

Motor Cycle Trials
Motor Cycle trials begin with two people setting up a Main Control centre and distributing radios to the Control officials and St John personnel. Approximately four people go out to set up a relay/repeater that will cover the complete area of the course. A motor cycle event could have as many as 25 controls with one of our members on each control along with motor cycle officials. Our aim on the controls is for the safety of the competitors and for relaying required information needed by the officials. These events can run any time from six to 24 hours. An operator could be in a location between eight to 30 hours.

Car Rallies
Car Rallies begin with two or three people setting up a main control centre, two setting up Main Control and one setting up Rally control officials and rally cars. Approximately four people go out to set up the relay/repeater(s) that will cover the entire course. For a car rally, two main repeaters have to be set up for the relaying of information. One repeater is used to relay times and the other is used for emergencies within the event, e.g., car accidents. Personnel may be placed at a variety of locations, e.g., main control, start, SOS, finish and monitoring of the repeaters. It is not unusual for an operator to handle more than one location for the event. With a car rally, start and finish times are very important and must be relayed back to Main Control on a regular basis.

Summary
Sometimes events can take the whole of the weekend and those that go away for the weekend have a great time together. Other events can be anything from 1 day to five days. The Classic Adelaide Rally is one such event.
If you think that you could handle having fun with great people for between one and five days, doing sometimes challenging work, then talk to one of our members, e-mail our division for more information or simply come along to one of our regular monthly meetings.