Ralph met with the city on Monday July 9th to see how we could work together for communications. We were immediately invited to observe the Tour de White Rock bicycle race the coming week-end and possibly help with the Friday event. As we want to work with the city we saw this opportunity to meet the staff, in particular Rita Clarkson who is the Emergency Social Services Coordinator for the city. So Eric met with Rita on Wednesday and to determine what was needed for Friday and set up some observers for the next two days.

The Friday event is a short race up Buena Vista. They needed a radio operator at the top where the finish line is to relay current standings to the middle and bottom of the course. It is a casual event and not one with a lot of time pressure and so would be a good starting project to work together on. TO help with this event Ken and Ross joined Eric and had a great time at the event relaying the standings in a orderly fashion. Ken was at the finish and called out the standings to the others who recorded them and passed them to their assigned officials. We were using the supplied commercial UHF radio equipment for the task. It generally worked but all of felt our 2m hand held test indicated they would have performed better.

The Saturday event was a 1KM loop the riders cycled around 60 times. It is quite contained area wise but will need radio coordination for road closures and any contestant problems. Ross observed the event to learn how we could provide help next year. Ralph attended the Sunday event, this one spreads out across the hill-side from one end to the other of the city and requires the most radio support.

Our next task is to debrief with Rita and talk about what we could do for her next year. It was a fun event to help with and I am sure next year we will be able to do much to ease the communication requirements.