Fred Charnley Retirement from RAYNET
RAYNET stalwart Fred Charnley recently retired from active participation after over 20 years involvement with the Lancashire RAYNET group.
RAYNET, The Radio Amateurs’ Emergency Network is the UK’s national voluntary communications service provided for the community by licensed radio amateurs. They are part of an established network of Voluntary Agencies activated by Lancashire County Council in support of certain emergency responses within Lancashire. These especially involve supporting the operation of emergency centres to shelter people evacuated as a result of emergency situations.
Fred’s commitment and professionalism when representing RAYNET were a credit to himself and the organisation and its beliefs. In recent years Fred has represented the group in multi-agency planning meetings, training and exercises in his role as Deputy County Controller as well as responding to call-outs when emergency incidents arose.
Fred’s previous “day-job” was with British Aerospace/BAe Systems but he was also heavily involved with amateur radio and solving the technical problems that were generate when putting together wide-area radio coverage and talk-groups. This proved most valuable when Fred was involved with one of his other pastimes – Mountain Marathons. Fred worked as part of the organisation for the national events held every year under the Karrimor International Mountain Marathon banner. Each year the KIMM event is held over a weekend in some remote part of the UK. Fred co-ordinated the radio safety and event monitoring network which helped make the competition the safe and well organised event that it is today on the national and international calendar.
As a sign of appreciation for Fred’s efforts and commitment over the years Deputy Chief Constable Mike Cunningham, the Chair of the Lancashire Resilience Forum, presented Fred with a plaque as a memento of his involvement with the LRF.