After a few years hiatus, we returned to Imbil to assist Far-A-Way Horse Endurance Riders with their Easter Endurance Carnival. This is a full-on 4-day long event, running over the Easter long-week-end with the first events starting early on the Friday morning, and the final day’s events starting even earlier in order to finish earlier on the Monday.
This event usually involves several events, including a couple that run over multiple days: a 320km marathon that runs the entire 4 day long week-end, a 120k “mini marathon” that takes place on three of the four days and numerous 80km and 40km events that take place on various days. This was what we were briefed with by email prior to the commencement of the event.
As we’ve experienced though with other events that take place at Imbil, things are often rather “fluid”. We at least know where the checkpoints are, and this is a forest we know well so for the most part, we’re reasonably well prepared. The bulk of the group arrived on the Thursday afternoon, with base being set up at Imbil Showgrounds.
Operation took place on a 2m portable repeater set up in the Imbil State Forest, with base taking a little while to get on-air properly due to issues with bad reception. Years before, base used to be in a slightly different location closer to Arthur Street instead of this event’s location near Digging’s Road however as that location is no longer available, we must improvise.
That evening’s briefing had the various checkpoint locations allocated to the operators, and a rough schedule of when we need to be there. For David VK4MDL and myself, we’ve been assigned Derrier Hill Grid. This is the intersection of two roads that meet near the crest of a hill.
Friday
We were on the checkpoint at 04:00 that morning. The checkpoint was a mere stone-throw away from the repeater, so hand-held radios were all that was necessary. First up was the 320km ride first leg, 15 competitors, fairly easy going. The first checkpoint was done in 20 minutes flat. The first light of the sun didn’t start making an appearance until 05:47. Quite cool as is often the case with Imbil at this time of year.
There was a brief period where we could dive back to base and pick up some supplies before the competitors finished passing through Checkpoint 2 (U Traverse, operated by Gary VK4ZGB) and thus would be back on their way to Derrier Hill Grid.
By 08:20 we were back on checkpoint and taking down numbers.
Base communications was mostly reliable, but as conditions shifted, did deteriorate at times. This was a niggling issue the entire event, initially thought to be related to the location of base. 4G communications also took a nose-dive as the sun came up, with an already weak LTE signal pretty much disappearing altogether, or yielding round-trip ping times of more than a minute.
Checkpoint 3 for the 320km ride finished at 10:34, the first two legs of the 320km ride over and done with. There were no more rides on the Friday.
That afternoon, some troubleshooting took place to try and isolate issues with weak radio reception.
Coincidentally at the same time, SSTV operator VK5KVA sent this transmission that was picked up by the AREG SSTV bot… maybe this was a solution to our repeater’s woes?
Some troubleshooting later soon revealed an out-of-tune diplexer as the cause. A temporary solution involving vertical separation of the transmit and receive antennas got us by for the event.
The 320km ride’s second leg concluded around 18:49… it’d be another 03:30 start for Saturday’s events.
Saturday
Just before 04:00, David and I were back on checkpoint, and Richard VK4ZA joined us. This time around we wouldn’t have just one ride to look after, there were four to worry about: 320km doing leg 3 and 4, the first leg of the 120km ride, a 80km ride and a 40km ride. Shortly after we were set up, we got word that the 320km riders were on their way to Derrier Hill Grid.
It wasn’t long after that, we had 80km riders coming through, at one point, we had 41 riders pass through in the space of 20 minutes. 4G communications was spotty at best, basically mostly usable prior to sunrise, then quickly wilting afterwards.
From there, things only got busier, by this stage we had John VK4ZI and his wife, who joined us on the checkpoint. The biggest challenge being that at this point, we had as much as 3 rides going simultaneously, one ride passing in the opposite direction to the other two. Confusion reigned supreme, as we took down numbers then (1) identified which ride they belonged to, and (2) which checkpoint they were passing through.
Later we had some mystery competitors with numbers we couldn’t match to any of the ranges we had been given… turns out there was a batch of introductory riders doing a 20km event, going through Derrier Hill Grid, turning around at a point just a few kilometres beyond the checkpoint, then heading back through the checkpoint to base.
By the afternoon, the dust had settled and we were back in base. The morning’s events would prove inspiration for a checkpoint management program that could run on a laptop or tablet to help “sort out” the competitors into their respective events.
John VK4IE meanwhile was running the Coonangibber Rock Pools checkpoint, which saw the 320km riders doing their 4th leg. By that stage in the event, the riders are usually quite spread out. A photo of the riders can be seen in the feature photo of this article.
Sunday
Given the long day yesterday, David and I had a day off. It was a chilly morning to be out in the forest.
The base set-up was a hybrid affair, computer based logging with a paper back-up, identical to that of the previous event.
Elsewhere, things were busy, particularly at Yabba Creek Road, manned by Gary VK4ZGB.
We were informed that the riders would be out on course at 2AM the next morning, thus we would need to be going by 1:30AM. We set our alarms and turned in for an early night.
Monday
I personally started to arouse around 1:27AM, to the sound of profuse cursing coming from one of our base operators, and the steady clip-clop of hooves as riders streamed out of the Digging’s Road gate to head out on track. Story goes Nathan VK4AEA had gotten up to answer a call from nature and observed riders saddling up, when he asked, he was told they were about to go out, they had been given permission to head out on track, early.
Needless to say, we needed to scramble, fast! David, Richard and I were soon out on the checkpoint, and we had our work cut out for us. There were three rides that day, 320km, 120km and 80km rides. By 03:35 we had all but 3 of the 320km riders, two of them would turn out to be non-starters (another thing we weren’t told about).
Things were fairly orderly until the afternoon: at that point it wasn’t clear whether competitors were even coming through our checkpoint on the way back or not. The arrows the riders follow were no help either. We tried contacting base, and they passed the message through to the ride organisers, but answers were not forthcoming. The mystery was partially solved when a rider for the 320km ride showed up. However, with no arrows, it was unclear whether they went straight ahead down the hill, or turned left and headed up the hill further.
Much umming and arring from base, and eventually, we got an answer… the missing arrow should have pointed straight ahead. We were able to direct the rider on their way.
At that point, David, Richard and I handed over to the “afternoon shift” team of John VK4ZI and wife Karen who ran the checkpoint for the afternoon.
By 2:30PM, the rides were over, with competitors all back at base. The base operators, Robert VK4KHW and Simon VK4TSC, wanted to head for home that afternoon, so assistance was provided to help them dismantle the base. A number of our group decided to chance the trip south, with many having to take the long road home due to a shooting on the Bruce Highway closing the motorway in both directions. The rest of us stayed back another night, heading home on the Tuesday morning after peak-hour had cleared.