AREC volunteers attended the annual Police SAR Qualifications course at Dip Flat, providing communications for the Search and Rescue exercise component.

Dip Flat is a remote military camp operated by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, located in the Marlborough region. The camp is situated on an open river flat along the Wairau River, surrounded by dense native forest and rugged mountains.

It has been utilised as a practical testing ground for new military recruits for over 60 years. AREC have supported NZ Police with the SAR component of the exercise since 2017, undertaking activities including the setup of antenna systems for HF and VHF, creating the comms plan for where to deploy the portable VHF repeaters, operating the radios and logging messages in SARTrack.

The team have also assisted in the past with the IMT part of the exercise, providing comms planning and operating SARTrack.

This year, we were there to help as six teams ventured out into the field to look for three ‘missing’ people who had been out for 3 days. On arrival the AREC vehicle was put into action with the team erecting a simplex antenna and entering the Police “students” into SARTrack – putting them into teams with the tracking radios.

The teams were either transported via vehicle, the Defence Force Mog, a Police 4WD or the RNZAF NH90 helicopter. Repeaters were set up by the students using the NH90. The team had two VHF repeaters and a VHF link repeater.

Some of the challenges for the exercise included RF shadowing due to the terrain, limited repeater access locations and marginal RF paths in some areas. The team used a hybrid communications model, which included the use of Radio (VHF/HF), Starlink for digital connectivity and coordination, and SARTrack for operational intelligence.

This fully off-grid solution supported Police in a high-complexity SAR environment, enabling a successful outcome for searchers who found the missing people on day three.