Equine Endurance Ride Support

First involvement with Equine Endurance was to fill in for a CB radio group who couldn’t cover the first day of a ride at Bothwell in 2005. WICEN covered until they arrived on the Saturday. The next ride was in 2006, for STER (Southern Tasmania Endurance Riders) at Rheban, near Orford. WICEN continued to service STER rides ,then included the Pyengana ride. This led to servicing the State Championships in Sassafras in 2009. Being a 24 hr event, I asked the other Amateur Radio clubs to assist. They and their successors have continued with the safety communications for several rides in their regions: NTARC in a big way technically, introducing RFID readers at checkpoints with data communications back to base, feeding a computerised recording and display system, integrated with the ride electronic timing system. The NW club, now NWTARC, have looked after the annual ride based in Sheffield.

My involvement deepened with the national championships, the Tom Quilty, held in the St Helens area in 2012. The 2011 State Championship served as a dress rehearsal. I worked with the organising committee developing the event. Members of three Tasmanian AR clubs were recruited to assist, as were Land Rover Owners Club members. I developed a tracking system which was displayed to the public via monitors and via the internet. WICEN stopped using it with a change of regular Base operators, reverting to paper. NTARC took things much further with the introduction of RFID readers at checkpoints and integration with ride electronic timing system in 2017. I joined the Tas Equine Endurance Riders Assn. and State Management Committee as Treasurer and Webmaster in 2018, actively supporting the sport since then in a number of roles.