Stuart LonglandSep 7, 2025

Dingo Creek Horse Endurance Ride

Dingo Creek was a challenge from a radio perspective, but was a really well-organised event and a joy to help out with. Far-a-way and Stirling's Crossing could learn a lot from this group! This has got to be one of the best-organised horse endurance ride events I've been involved with. The ride operated out of Wondai showgrounds, which normally plays host to horse racing events and the tracks all took place through the state forest nearby. WICEN base was set up under the rusty roof of the […]

https://brisbanewicen.org.au/2025/09/07/dingo-creek-horse-endurance-ride/

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Sep 5, 2025
Another #EmergencyCommsExercise this weekend. This time #WICEN is helping in a #HorseEnduranceRide at Dingo Creek near #WondaiQld.
Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Jul 11, 2025

#BAWG (Brisbane Area #WICEN Group) is headed back to Imbil once again to #StirlingsCrossing for another #EmergencyCommsExercise. This time we're helping support the #QERA state championships.

I'll be assisting with some of Saturday's events, as appointments on Monday mean we have to be headed back home by Sunday afternoon.

Stuart LonglandJul 1, 2025

Toowoomba Endurance Horse Riders Hip Pocket Challenge

Brisbane WICEN came out to the freezing cold town of Southbrook to assist the Toowoomba Endurance Horse Riders Association in the running of this year's Hip Pocket Challenge. This normally takes place in March, and is usually one of the first events on our calendar, however Cyclone Alfred totally blew any chance of that happening away. So we bundled up our equipment (and ourselves) and headed west for the open plains. We all arrived on the Friday afternoon and set up base. Operations was […]

https://brisbanewicen.org.au/2025/07/01/toowoomba-endurance-horse-riders-hip-pocket-challenge/

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Jun 26, 2025

We're about to set off for another #EmergencyCommsExercise at #SouthbrookQld for the #Toowoomba Endurance Horse Riders' Association Hip Pocket Challenge.

This _was_ to take place in March, however #CycloneAlfred was the final word on that… so it got postponed until now. Southbrook is a little south-west of Toowoomba on the high plains… very open to the wind and quite high in altitude. Consequently, I'm grabbing all the warm gear I can lay my hands on. This morning Toowomba region had a overnight minimum of -0.1°C. Sunday is predicted to get down to 5°C (a little warmer).

It'll also be the first event I try out the checkpoint reporter program I released a couple of weeks ago. I've of course packed clipboards and paper forms, so if things go pear shaped with the computing, we have the paperwork to back it up.

There are four rides taking place. Tomorrow afternoon there's a 20km introductory ride: I understand WICEN's not involved in that one officially, but we'll probably use it as a trial run of the software.

Sunday morning we have an 80km, 40km and 20km ride to support.

#BrisbaneAreaWICEN

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Jun 22, 2025

I've been busy the last couple of weekends busily coding up a program to assist me on checkpoints at future #EmergencyCommsExercise events.

We have an existing application, written in VisualBASIC 6… which works well, but I worry about future maintainability given its dependence on legacy proprietary development environments.

Therefore I made the decision to write my own: https://checkpointreporter.vk4msl.com/

It uses #Java so it's cross-platform, with fairly simple deployment steps (assuming JREv8+ is there already, just download the .jar and run it). We've got an event at #Southbrook which was moved after #CycloneAlfred wiped things out last time. We'll see how it goes on its inaugural run.

Checkpoint Reporter

Stuart LonglandMay 12, 2025

Kokoda Challenge Sunshine Coast

Brisbane WICEN was invited to assist this year in helping the Kokoda Youth Foundation run the 2025 Kokoda Challenge event at Kenilworth in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. This was a unique event for us as it was more traditional message passing rather than counting bicycles or checking off horse endurance ride competitors. There would be a handful of checkpoints, and competitors walked or jogged between them on one of three possible routes: 18km, 30km or 48km. They each carried a RFID tag […]

https://brisbanewicen.org.au/2025/05/12/kokoda-challenge-sunshine-coast/

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)May 9, 2025

Well, we're on our way again, another #EmergencyCommsExercise, this time for this year's #KokodaChallenge, taking place at #KenilworthQld

We'll actually base ourselves at #SterlingsCrossing outside Imbil which will serve as a checkpoint, but base will be at Kenilworth, as will be our checkpoint.

About half the group will be camped at Kenilworth and half at Stirling's crossing.

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)May 7, 2025

This weekend I'll be assisting with the #KokodaChallenge2025 … apparently we're on the first check-point near #KenilworthQld.

This is the first #EmergencyCommsExercise where I'll be using the official #ERPLAN message forms.

This will be interesting. Actual message passing instead of counting horses and ordering farriers/rescue floats.

I just grabbed this file and tweaked it in Inkscape a bit… making a version that had two forms per A4 page with a slightly newer (vector!) logo. I now have a thick wad of paper for this week-end.

https://brisbanewicen.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/message_form.pdf

Stuart LonglandApr 25, 2025

Far-a-way Easter Endurance Carnival

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 […]

https://brisbanewicen.org.au/2025/04/25/far-a-way-easter-endurance-carnival/