Container a signal of communication improvements
It’s not much to look at, just a standard shipping container, and a small one at that. But the steel container was the cause of quite a bit of excitement for Penticton Search and Rescue members Saturday as it sat in the parking lot for the Nickel Plate cross-country ski area.
That’s because the small cube-like container is part of what’s needed for the new radio repeater tower that SAR is installing on a high point above the Apex Mountain Ski Resort.
“It’s the same heavy gauge steel on it, so it’s quite robust,” said Rick McKelvey, speaking for the group. “That’s the building the repeater equipment will be installed in and the radio mast will be anchored into the rock right adjacent to it.”
There’s a battery system inside that powers the repeater, with solar panels on the outside to keep them charged, making the whole installation self sustaining and allowing it to be packed into a small installation.
“This will allow us to have much extended radio coverage in the regional district,” said McKelvey. “The way that we’ve been operating, with just the base station out of the SAR hall, there are many areas in the region that we can’t reach easily with our radios.”
“In emergencies, we’ve been able to use the amateur radio club’s repeater, but it’s not really designed for that sort of work and it interferes with their use of it,” said McKelvey. “We’ll be completely independent and with the output from this, we’ll have much improved coverage everywhere.”
The equipment will be installed later this summer, but the biggest challenge to getting going on the new project was getting the container to the repeater location. The first plan was to drive the container up to the location, but the road proved not to be suitable so McKelvey said they had to look for an alternative.
“With the very late snow we had this year and the late spring, the road up there is still not passable,” he said. “It would have been quite tricky to get a trailer up with this container on it in any event.”
Seeing the military’s Search and Rescue Cormorant helicopter training in the area gave McKelvey an idea, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to take on the job. However, FortsBC also had a heavy lift helicopter in the area, moving poles into position for the new high-tension power lines.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I suggested to one of my colleagues that he should phone Fortis, since they have all this equipment about,” he said, adding that he also spoke to a friend at Fortis himself.
“I think it was the next day that Allteck, the company doing the installation, phoned me and said we can’t give you the Chinook but we do have medium-duty helicopters in the area, we’d be more that happy to help out,” he said.
Pierre Dufour, Fortis’ manager for the new transmission line project, had arranged the deal, and Fortis agreed to pick up the bill for helping Search and Rescue out.
The helicopter got a last-minute call to a report of a forest fire, but this time the pilot made time to make sure he got the job done early Saturday morning before heading off to Merritt. Along with the Valhalla helicopter, piloted by Blair Savege, came a small team from Allteck.
“They had two of their workers available for us as well. They helped to rig the container for the lift and then they undid the rigging at the top of the hill,” said McKelvey. “Fortis paid the bill. It was quite the team effort.”
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