CQ CQ Paterson Valley

Are you boar-ed to tears? Quit hoggin all the resilience skills and come help cure our comms gap!

We're looking into setting up a 3 village Ham radio backbone with CB broadcast for emergency comms between Pato, Vacy and Gresford. Based on contour maps it looks like Paterson to Vacy has good line of sight, but that we may need a repeater between Vacy and Gresford to navigate the mountain obstacles. A few locations have been spitballed, and yeah testing will be fun!

When the grid goes down, mobile towers run on backup batteries, and most of those are flat within a few hours. After that, no calls, no texts, no internet. Amateur radio doesn't care. It can run off a 12V battery and a solar panel. For rural communities, that's not just a fun fact, it can be a lifeline.

Australia has learned this the hard way. WICEN (Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network) volunteers kept communications alive during the Black Summer bushfires and the 2022 Lismore floods, both times stepping in precisely when mobile networks gave up the ghost. Remote communities have relied on ham radio for decades, not out of nostalgia, but because it works when nothing else does.

We have local energy and some funding options but to begin with we especially need more knowledge. Part of the goal is to help preserve and pass it on, as it's increasingly rare to find subject matter experts. No you don't have to have heaps of experience to get involved, everyone is super welcome :)

The first proper brainstorm is scheduled for:

📍Paterson Hub & Harvest, behind Paterson Post Office. Just look for the orange and purple bunting and flags

📅 Wednesday 1st July

⌚ Planning discussion will kick off at 5pm, but feel free to come earlier if you want to share some stories.

Your grandkids might give your radio stories the cold (pork) shoulder but we'd love to hear them!

It's going to be sow good.