robin-baldwin
21-04-2009, 10:33 AM
On Saturday 18th April Rover Rescue provided 4 vehicles to transport St John’s Ambulance members around the course of a 25 mile Sponsored Walk in aid of Help for Heroes. We were originally advised to plan for 150 walkers and ended up with over 350.
The course varied from beach to rolling hills and caused problems with comms. We were using amateur radio with a 2m net which couldn’t reach the whole area, however in several places were we couldn’t communicate with 2m we were able to get through with St John’s own handheld radios on a similar frequency, we also had problems with cell ‘phones in various areas. Not only were there problems with comms due to the terrain but there were areas of the course we could not reach with vehicles due to access problems, fortunately there were no medical problems other than the inevitable blisters.
Lessons learned:
Earlier consultation with the organisers would have led to minor changes to the course and made access to the course easier for our vehicles.
Although all walkers were registered with the organisers at the start there was no system in place to check walkers in at the end.
One of our vehicles (mine) lost its aerial to an overhanging branch. Fortunately I had a spare gutter mount ¼ wave aerial and that was fitted within 5 minutes.
We knew there would be problems with radio coverage. We planned to overcome this by having the Control mobile and moving from high point to high point on the course as the walkers moved through. The second vehicle shadowed this movement and relayed messages when necessary. This worked well except at one point where the 2 control vehicles were in parallel valleys however we were still able to pass messages through another vehicle.
The course varied from beach to rolling hills and caused problems with comms. We were using amateur radio with a 2m net which couldn’t reach the whole area, however in several places were we couldn’t communicate with 2m we were able to get through with St John’s own handheld radios on a similar frequency, we also had problems with cell ‘phones in various areas. Not only were there problems with comms due to the terrain but there were areas of the course we could not reach with vehicles due to access problems, fortunately there were no medical problems other than the inevitable blisters.
Lessons learned:
Earlier consultation with the organisers would have led to minor changes to the course and made access to the course easier for our vehicles.
Although all walkers were registered with the organisers at the start there was no system in place to check walkers in at the end.
One of our vehicles (mine) lost its aerial to an overhanging branch. Fortunately I had a spare gutter mount ¼ wave aerial and that was fitted within 5 minutes.
We knew there would be problems with radio coverage. We planned to overcome this by having the Control mobile and moving from high point to high point on the course as the walkers moved through. The second vehicle shadowed this movement and relayed messages when necessary. This worked well except at one point where the 2 control vehicles were in parallel valleys however we were still able to pass messages through another vehicle.