End of a Marine Radio Legend

by Rob Kothe on 8 Aug 2006 It all started when they wanted a better life for their children. But this unusual marine engineer and his wife never dreamed that the move would lead to OAM, or to becoming one of the best known and respected names in the marine radio world in Australia.

Penta Comstat is the name, and Derek Barnard, known Australia wide as just ‘Derek’ is the name behind the legend. Sadly it will all finish on September 30 this year. Typically low key, he says, ‘I should have retired years ago’ – but here is the story:

To the uninitiated, ‘Firefly’ sounds like a code name in a James Bond movie, but it is also a small community just west of Nabiac on the NSW mid north coast and home of Penta Comstat VZX, the specialised safety and general communications station for everything from round world solo adventurers to Sydney to Hobart racers to the leisure cruising boats that make their way up and down the east coast of Australia.

The station, which has had no volunteer workers and no government funding, depends on its memberships to fund all its activities, and as such has become the guru of marine radio communications, consulted by government and racing bodies alike. But it wasn’t always like that…

When Derek and Jeanine left Sydney with their four year old Nicole and moved to the near Central coast, they had a dream of starting a marine business and giving their children more of the natural childhood that they had known themselves in Tasmania and South Australia.

Derek started a tiny 27MHz only station in the premises of Gosford Chrysler Marine, and the name PENTA was taken from the Chrysler logo, the 5-pointed Penta star.

Local fishing clubs had no volunteer rescue service or radio stations operating during the week, and Derek hoped he could provide a service.

And provide a service he did! - so appreciated that within a year he had expanded to VHF and HF and was a seven day week service. 'The membership used to be up on a wall-chart,' remembers Derek, ' but very soon we had to start a card index system!'

During these years, the accepted method of obtaining position reports during races was to have a radio relay vessel pass the information to the yacht club by radio telegram or radio telephone call.

But the racing world changed in 1979, when Penta was asked to play a role in the Sydney to Mooloolaba race. This was so successful that other races swiftly followed.

However, the world of radio frequencies was jealously controlled by OTC, and the use of HF radio was restricted to a general frequency only – the south Pacific itinerant frequency of 4143.6 kHz. This meant that race scheds were often disrupted by commercial traffic. There was a long way to go.

Derek could imagine a much safer world for the leisure yachting world. He, and the yacht clubs, wanted his own frequency for races, for the yacht journeys home after the races, and he also wanted to provide a regular daily service and access to the supplementary HF distress, safety and calling frequencies. He made submission after submission to the government without success.

The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race has always been the bench mark in Australia, the race that every racing sailor dreams of entering, the race that even complete landlubbers like to watch, the race that puts Australia on the world racing calendar. And it was the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race that saved the day for Penta.

When it was reported in the national media that approval to use the 4143.6 kHz frequency had been refused for the 1980 Sydney to Hobart return scheds, the writing was on the - radio waves. After a summit meeting in Canberra, Penta, with the support of a large number of telegrams and telex messages sent by yacht clubs and individuals, was given most of what it wanted..

This proved to be a major victory, not only for Penta but for the yachting community as well, and heralded a new era in HF communication for yachts and other pleasure craft.

Now recognised as a force in radio communications, Penta quickly upgraded in many directions, going into weather forecasting, long range navigation warnings in cooperation with the the Federal Sea Safety and Surveillance Centre. As a result of their submissions, the Department of Transport completely revised the reporting guidelines for small craft, and by 1985 Penta - by now called Penta Comstat - also provided all the communications for most of the major yacht races in Australia. In Derek’s words, ‘It took us more than 2 years to get the authorities to agree, and then only with the support of lots of people and the yacht clubs, but from there on, it changed for everybody.’

Over the years, ‘Derek’ has maintained contact for such international sailing luminaries as Jon Sanders (double circumnavigation) Kay Cottee, the Melbourne to Osaka Double-Handed Race and the Pan Pacific Race.

In spite of his hard-won recognition, he fought continual battles to obtain a better deal in frequencies for the leisure boating fraternity, and by the 90’s had obtained a full range from 4 to 22 mHz

The station has continued to expand the services and upgrade equipment to keep pace with the latest technology, and in 1997 email was finally added to its communications portfolio and then there was the move from Gosford to the rural peace further north at Firefly.

Whether it has been the provision of weather services radio servcies for ocean races or for yachts making ocean passages, Penta Comstat, taking more than one thousand reports every month, has been able to confirm the safety and well-bing of many hundreds of vessels to the reassurance of countless family and friends. It has been involved in many high profile distress situations and untold others.

The OAM Derek received in 1980 was followed by a Rotary Paul Harris Fellowship in 1983 and many other awards stretching through to the present, all recognising the unique contribution that the Barnards, Derek and Jeanine, have made to safety at sea for all leisure time sailors.

Recently, according to Derek, Sailmail has started to replace the services that they had provided over the years. ‘We started with Sailmail in the year 2000.’ It wasn’t long after that that Derek could see what the future held. Sailmail, he says, is ‘ the way that people are doing it now. They get their weather, their positioning reporting, there's facilities and the software to pass their reports to the Yacht Rep systems.’

Derek’s Sailmail station flourished: ‘We're the biggest station in the global network by a mile, we do as much as the whole of the US stations combined. We do a third of the world's traffic for several months during our peak period of the year.’

He goes on, ‘They don't want to come up once or twice a day and talk to Pentacomstat they want to be able to communicate with the people at home, email and all of that just like they do when they're at shore.’

In fact, Derek sees no need for his service now to be replaced. ‘We're just easing out quietly and quite frankly, after the 30th of September, hoping to just fade off into oblivion, we don't want any big fanfare, no parties, no celebration, we just want to disappear.’

But of course Derek and his Penta Comstat service will never disappear from the hearts and minds of the sailors for whom ‘Derek’ became a household word, and Sail-World adds its thanks and commendation to those of thousands of sailors who have benefited so well over the years.