Quote Originally Posted by Wheeze View Post
James, I suspect I will want to arrange a further trackere loan soon. Will that be possible? Also, do you have any experience of sat phones?
My main concern is that I have to be 100% confident of being able to contact the safety refuges on the race. My worry is that it is unfeasible to test VHF performance ahead of the event so it would be a real gamble...admittedly the odds are favourable but I want to eradicate gamble in this one critical area. Essentially I am looking at a 4 node network...Race HQ and the 3 safety refuges....plus one mobile to the mobile search team.
Yes you can borrow a tracker again (just need to get DW race out the way next weekend)
Radios - really appreciate what you are doing.. perhaps better for an email but I'll put it here as it seems to interest people. We have backpack repeater that will happily last for 4 days, just needs to be locked up to a fence post (I do sneak a tracker in the box in case someone try's to nick it as it is £2.5k worth).

Two options on my visits down south I drop it off for a few days and you try it out in situ - a reasonable amount of work to put it up and get radios to each of your key locations but if like me communications is serious then its worth doing. Fortunately for you you only have to do it the once. The other option is that I do have some software that does predict the coverage of the repeater. Its helpful for identifying the optimum location for the repeater, but its a bit of arse to use and nothing is better than doing it for real. Again for testing happy to lend this kit for free. Its not cheap stuff, but it is reliable.

I do like the trend of the thread and happy to help with my knowledge.