Community Carols Sing-a-long, Santa & Supper

Bring a supper plate to share and parents bring a small inexpensive gift with child’s name for Santa’s sack

All Welcome

Enquiries George Hoad ghoad@internode.on.net

Monthly meetings for the Killabakh Community Association are held on the Third Thursday of every month and are open for any community members to attend. Active participation in the meetings requires membership to the KCA, which incurs a $2 annual fee to be paid to the Treasurer.

Beginning Fri 15 Dec 23, the Killabakh Rural Fire Brigade UHF Base Station will be on air between 17:30 and 18:30 (5.30PM to 6.30PM) each Friday afternoon to enable members of KERN to test their radios and make calls to the station.

This is a wonderful start to what we hope will be a valuable component of our community resilience and emergency plan. We aim for it to be a mechanism that will enable us to help our own family and our fellow community members in the next emergency/disaster event in our community.

Please use the Friday afternoon sessions to practice your use of the radio and to become familiar with it. I recommend that you call in every Friday afternoon or as often as you can so that you get used to hearing different voices. Practice makes perfect.

Please do the following:
Commit to participating as often as possible on a weekly basis because this will give you confidence and trust in the system.

What this will achieve is:
You will get to know that you can speak confidently with Killabakh Base (the fire station) you will also get to know who else on the network that you can hear and talk to.

From here on in, I will invite KERN users to not only call Killabakh Base but to call each other and practice using your callsign and doing radio checks with each other. Just remember the procedures:
- KERN is a SIMPLEX network. This means we all talk and listen on the same channel, so only one station can talk at any one time.
- Listen out before you transmit
- Make sure no one else is speaking before you speak
- Press the button for a split second before you speak because you do not want to cut off your first words
- Start with the callsign of the station you are calling and then say your callsign; eg:
"Killabakh Base THIS IS wun too fife six Comboyne Road, radio check Over", or
"wun too fife six THIS IS wun sev-en too too Comboyne Road, radio check over"
- When responding to another station who has requested a radio check; eg:
"wun sev-en too too Comboyne Road THIS IS wun ait fow-er Yarnold Road, loud and clear OVER."

Please refer to the attached Phonetic Alphabet and keep a printout of it next to your radio.
For more information and to register your participation please contact Brian Willey

A weekly community gathering for a cuppa and a piece of cake. Come and have a chat with the locals, buy and sell some locally grown fresh produce and handmade preserves, or just come to say hi. Bring the excess from your garden, and things you've made yourself, if you'd like to sell something.