1998 City 2 Surf

Coming home one Sunday afternoon I found a curious message on my answering machine. Kevin Dawson, VK2CKD had left a cryptic message about the Sydney City to Surf fun run, mentioning something about going in it. On returning the call I was told that we had just got permission to use APRS in the race, placing a ?tracker? on the lead vehicle. What I did not expect was being told that by that time next week the race would be over.

With fear and trepidation I told the WICEN team that I was prepared for the event. After all I had presented talks on APRS to about 15 groups over the previous 6 months. How could I not be ready?

During the past few months I had been preparing, hoping an event such as this would come up. I had been gradually putting the equipment I would need together. I had enough equipment to be able to track 2 vehicles, set up a repeater and be able to monitor the signal on my laptop (The Equipment I used is listed in the text box).

As well as getting all the equipment set up I also needed to obtain maps for the area. This was both easier and harder than it sounds. Maps are available from public domain sources, but these needed to be digitised and calibrated for use. Luckily I had already done some work with AutoCad Lite and Visual Basic allowing me to simply get the maps out.

On the day of the race, I got up nice and early for the drive into Sydney. With some luck the weather was much better that the previous few days - where Sydney experienced a 1 in 100 year storm. Basically the weather was fine.

When people were assigned to stations, APRS was left out. That required me to scrounge for personel. With luck, Michael Roll, a newer unlicensed member of the Waverly club was prepared to help me. It would aggreed that he would travel with my mobile transmitter in the start vehicle to turn it off if anything went wrong. Michael was given a UHF scanner and mobile phone so that we could get him in that case.

Those wondering if this is legal, the answer is yes. I set up the station with no controls other than an external power switch. This clearly comes under the definition of an unattended packet station, even if it is mobile!)

Then Mike and I went to the Start Line where the lead vehicle was stationed. Once we got there the driver had no idea that they were going to have additional equipment and a passenger. Some quick talking got the equipment loaded onto the 4-wheel drive. That was after telling them all about how APRS got into the Atlanta Olympic Games. After dropping off mike I then proceeded to the finish line where I was to set up the reciever.

There were a few hassles here. The first was attempting to get the TNC to receive any packets. This was solved by jugling the modular connections on the radio and the TNC. The other problem was a bit harder to fix - Attaching the antenna to the shed where the equipment was located. The problem was somewhat solved by judicous use of Duct tape.

Things improved once the packets did not need to go through the digi-peater. At the time I thoiught there was a problem but it was actually working as designed. Basically I was not experienced enough with the program nor with APRS.

I was only sending packets out every 1 minute. A more appropriate timing would have been every 10-20 seconds. In the future this is what I will do.

Although there was little to show because of the update times, the organisers were impressed with the concept. The idea of being able to have an icon move accross the screen automatically with the runnner is is a great idea for this type of events.

Next year we might even have live coverage onto the Internet, and maybe even have the image brodcaset on TV.