My weekend radio adventure at the Convict 100 by Dom VK2JNA

A successful event. Some incidents but nothing major: broken thumbs, collar bone, many scrapes & scratches & broken bikes. Didn’t have to evac by helicopter anyone (this time). I took out a few people by road from CP18 with roof rack stuffed with bikes. We were situated at Checkpoint 18 (73km mark), “The Split” near top centre of map.

You can see the course is very hilly & difficult to cover from a radio perspective. The riders had to wade rivers, ride across a kayak bridge & survive the rest. It is a serious ride.

We had 4 linked repeaters on the course using a mixture of mid-band (78MHz) & Hi-Band (153MHz) & many Handheld radios & mobile rigs in our vehicles. The course is so difficult from a radio perspective we had dropouts on the mid-band due to changing characteristics through the day. We stared in fog & finished in glorious sunshine.