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Technician Dave King installs on Mt Maude the repeater he made, which has massively improved VHF coverage for Lake Hāwea users.
Summertime users of Lake Hāwea will have more communications backup after a successful campaign to extend VHF coverage to the three-quarters of the lake that hasn’t been getting it.
The existing facility on Mt Roy covers most of Lake Wānakabut only about 25% line-of sight coverage for nearby Lake Hāwea.
Last week a repeater was installed on Mt Maude, above Hāwea township, and means that almost all the lake is now covered – even about 8km up the Hunter River, with the only identified remaining shadow area around Silver Island.
This is the outcome of a successful $75,000 fundraising campaign by the Upper Clutha Radio Telephone Users Association, whose chair Ian Brown has pronounced himself “totally and unreservedly stoked’’.
“My goal was to get it done for summer – and we made it by two days,’’ he said.
“The support we got from the community, in the end, was really good.’’
Donors included the Central Lakes Trust and Otago Community Trust, but also a raft of individuals, Invercargill-based donors among them.
Once the money came in, it had just been a matter of co-ordination, making the repeater and getting the helicopter out to install it.
And after all the fundraising and co-ordination beforehand “it only took us an hour and a half to set it up’’.
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The view from Roy’s Peak looking towards Lake Hāwea – radio coverage is line-of-sight and the intruding range prevents it reaching three-quarters of the lake and land around it. The new Mt Maude repeater has almost completely fixed that.
In future, an even better location may be accessible, on Corner Peak or Rocky Point, but that was Department of Conservation land and consent involved more official rigmarole.
In the meantime, the present site on Tim Burdon’s Mt Burke Station land, had been made readily available – “he just said yeah, go for it’’ Brown said.
The trust’s next big push would be for greater membership, Brown said. At present, it had 50 members who paid $55 annually, and it would cost more than $2500 a year to maintain and support the VHS system that was an important one not only for individual needs, but also potentially in times of civil defence emergency.
