North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

tristan.sloan wrote:The recent incident at the Finissis river is a prime example of why we need a dedicated radio repeater system and rescue organisation in the NT. The gentlemen who was injured had to wait 3.5 hours for help to arrive and large part of that was due to problems communicating with rescue services due to patchy mobile phone reception and they were lucky to have even that. It was very lucky that the injuries were not life threatening. With a proper radio communication system not only would of help arrived earlier but boats in the near vicinity could of been contacted to provide first aid.

As it stands the Water Police and the Volunteer Surf Life Saving Association both posses adequate rescue vessels and equipment and a further meeting to follow up from todays Water Safety Advisory meeting will be conducted on the 23rd to discuss the radio repeater network. At this stage it looks like a suitable sponsor has been found to fund the installation program.

I will keep you updated after this meeting.

Good news about a suitable sponsor , hope they are in it for the long term.

I think getting the radio repeater network up and running is priority here.
And as you say Tristan the Water Police & Surf Life Saving Association have
the vessels to do the job, so if the communication works the rest should fall
into place.

cheers

I was at the 4WD/Camping show on the weekend and there was a VMR Darwin site set up .
I had a chat to them for a while and grabbed all the info and they were telling me you use an app these days to log in and the track your vessell.
I suppose it is the same system as the Pro boats and large vessels.
Couldnt help walking away confused after i raised the subject on here a while back.
Once i get a chance to go through all the flyers my 3 boys generously collected for me on everything from car stereos to the new holdens i might be able to post some info up here.
Edo

Sorry wouldn't call them VMR , they were Volunteer Coast Gaurd and were spruiking this new app for your phone to try and move away from calling in on your marine radio. The "app" available for android/ iphone etc is called "Safe Trx", they handed me a flyer and i went home had a look and joined up, pretty easy to use via your phone when you head out.You guys are probably already using it but i just thought i would throw it out there.
Might be worth looking into if ya keen.

Edo

I don't believe that much will change in the NT wrt maritime communications for the moment.

Every now and again up pops an organisation with a bucket of eggs and the big stick. They seem to have good intentions but never have the follow-through to implement anything.

The last lot was the coast guard with their grand plan. I designed a network for them and they disappeared.

The latest lot is the Lifesavers. Grand plan stuff but won't talk when the chips are down. They have engaged a consultant firm from Sydney who also won't talk.
Hope it wasn't that consultancy firm that produced the powerpoint display presented at the recent emergency service communication meeting. Probably well meaning but hopeless as an executable plan. Another meeting this coming week I understand.

Basically, the Lifesaver plan was to use 5 marine repeaters just to cover the same area that your Ch 21 repeater up on Palmerston water tower covers by itself already. Why for goodness sake?

Nothing much is going to change in the NT until somebody grabs the maritime emergency communications question by the throat and deals with it. Ones from the CG and the Lifesavers that I've spoken to recently are followers not leaders. That's why nothing will happen.

This forum has already shown what it can do without any of the rubbish these new people are bringing to the table.

FFF should do it.

To cover the areas nominated (from Blaze Point to Cape Hotham) all that's needed is 1 repeater at Dundee on Ch 81. Existing Ch 21 already covers from Cape Hotham to just short of Dundee. There are 2 suitable sites at Dundee. The Telstra tower and also the emergency services tower where the Coppers, Power and Water Authority and Bushfire Council already have services. Infrastructure is already in place.

Ch 21 and Ch 81 would then overlap to the east of Dundee thus giving total coverage from Blaze Point to Cape Hotham (the nominated coverage target area) via just 2 repeaters. A repeater at the emergency services site at Dundee could be monitored from Darwin if necessary ( if nobody are Dundee can be found to do it).

Its that simple.

The new CEO at AFANT is pretty switched on so I don't believe there'll be any of the fiddling around like last time. AFANT already has 1 repeater. Why not just put the second 1 in at Dundee?

You guys at FFF are experts at organising this sort of stuff without all of the b...s.. that seems to be going on at the moment. You've done it before.

The poor old coppers must be tearing their hair out trying to get something moving there.

Here's a map of the expected coverage from Point Blaze to Cape Hotham.

Areas covered Finniss R, Little Finniss R, Bynoe Harbour, 40km off Dundee Beach, Fog Bay PLUS all of the existing Ch 21 coverage. A significant overlap is predicted around Bynoe Harbour.

If somebody wants to really check the coverage, get the Firies to put a Bushfire Council radio out of a vehicle into a boat + antenna and go for a boat ride. That'll tell you exactly as the Bushfire Council repeater will be on the same tower and on frequencies close to the VHF marine band repeater.

As been said before : It ain't rocket science.

what do you mean Ronje......AFANT already own 1 repeater???
I know at the time they supplied no funding or parts or help.......

Hello Mopinox. Been a while. How are you travelling?

Yeah. You're right about AFANT during those times.

They supplied their name ( much later) to a ACMA licence application and also to gain access to PAWA's water tower at Palmerston. AFANT owns the licence 0nly.

Prior to that late involvement, the then CEO was trying to have two-bob each way. Wasn't helpful at all. In fact I believe there was obstruction. I think eventually that Chris Makepeace offered to supply a new antenna. Don't know if he did or not.

FFF members did everything and owned everything. I think there is a spare repeater (a Philips FM 828 / 25A) floating around up there as well. I don't think it was used in the end. Maybe that could be used at Dundee in the absence of anything else to get things off the ground.

AFANT was to maintain the repeater. I threw in a $100 or so to their repeater maintenance fund as did others I'm sure.

Anyway, that was then. This is now and there has been a changing of the guard in the crucial AFANT CEO position (twice). The new bloke Tristian seems pretty switched on so perhaps there'll be a step forward in fishing community benefits.

A repeater at Dundee would be extremely useful for fishos for safety of life purposes and AFANT involvement in it would be good. They're sitting on a lot of government money meant for recreational fishing improvements squirreled away.