Hi Matt,
is that the same number you gave me on our QSO this Tuesday? I could hear the number you gave me but I was not sure if it is a reference for a park or a lake …
73 Martin, OE5REO
BTW: I drove by this lake (but unfortunately did not stop) when I visited New Zealand in 2007 …
Wow! What a morning. 
Left home at 0445z. 0545z I was QRV from Benaquhallie GM/ES-065.
I didn’t operate from the summit this time around. Instead I was on the south slope, by the memorial. Plenty of rocks for me to set up a guyless mast. 7m mast (extended to 6m) 20m monoband Up and outer, 5m rg174, common mode choke, ft-857d, 35 watts on 20m SSB.
A run of VK’s including three VK summits, and then @ZL4NVW. A new DXCC for me! More VK’s, QSB, Europe awakens and pileups at the other end.
0630 pack up and head down. 0715, at work, changed and walking 6" taller.
Thank you ZL and VK!
Thank you. New DXCC for me, as I only operate portable. My challenge now is to get over and get some Completes!
Hi Fraser,
It was great to log you. Thanks
I assume the antenna is a centre fed half wave with the horizontal bit pointed towards the target area. You probably have mentioned this before but it didn’t stick with me. Nice use of the stocks. Pity about work.
The 20 m CW beacons on the EU long path were stronger than the others. I actually worked you with my beam heading short path. Blush. And yes you were better when I turned it 180 degrees. It’s only 2 elements and has a poor F/B.
It’s a centre fed 1/4 wave for 20m. Each element is 16’ (4.88m) of wire. Feedpoint is 1m off the ground. One element vertical up the pole, one horizontal, supported by walking poles at the far end. In theory it has some gain towards the horizontal element, so ihadthat stretched out at 300°, roughly.
TBH 16.5’ of wire would probably bring the resonance down a bit lower in the band. Mine is 1.8:1 at 14.080 and 1.1:1 at 14.330.
Hi Fraser,
Great job, well done!
Your success just inspired me to give it a try tomorrow morning as well.
I’ve just entered an alert for HB/BL-014 from 5:30 UTC on and hope to get my first S2S with VK or ZL into the log. Currently there are no alerts from VK or ZK at this time, but @DD5LP will be also looking for VK/ZL a bit later on. So guys and girls from down under, give it a try, before the geomagnetic forecast gets worse on Friday.
I already activated this low summit this year, but it’s quick to reach from home, not surrounded by too many trees and has a bench.
The best takeoff from this summit is towards S/E, but I already did several contacts from there to North and Central America, also a S2S with @AJ2I.
I’ll use my typical setup with an EFHW antenna in inverted-L configuration and 10W SSB.
I’ll enable the speech compressor and reduce the TX-bandwidth a bit, for additional punch.
Fraser, maybe we’ll have a S2S later on, when you’re on GM/ES-070?
73 Stephan
Thanks Fraser,
I should have played your video in the middle of this topic where you do a nice show and tell on the antenna. Sorry. We can be a bit slow here.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Hi Ron, Ive had so many questions about the antenna (on youtube, socials etc) that I am doing a short video on it. I think that SFI is the real star, not my wire!
Your antenna was working today Fraser 16 thousand km journey to Mt Bryan.
I was using a link dipole up at 6m feed point and KX3 was at 10w pwr.
I ended up with 37 QSO today on Mt Bryan the pile up on CW was full on really hard to pick a station to reply to. It been so quiet this part of the world for a while now will take some getting used to big pile ups. I wish HI.
Not sure what that distortion was to start on our QSO i could hear it on your signal as well to start off. I had not quite netted onto you either for a couple overs. But you were nice and clear by the end. Hope you managed to work the other Ops who were out in VK/ZL. I got an S2S with Matt ZL/VK1MA on the morning summit.
Once again great to get you in my log.
Regards
Ian vk5cz …
It was great to make the contact, Fraser. There was local QRM due to overdriven transmitters on nearby frequencies causing wide band distortion products to bleed over into our frequency. Luckily the worst of them was silent when I was listening for you. I had nothing like the signal level reported by Andrew VK1AD in Canberra.
My station was a KX3 at 15w, ZS6BKW doublet at 7m AGL centre fed by 11.1m of 300 ohm ribbon, a current balun at the radio and the ATU in the KX3. It usually works pretty well on 20m, which is one of the bands it is supposed to work well on. (also works well on all other HF bands incl 80m).
The summit Mt Coolum VK4/SE-114 is about 1200 km by road north of Canberra. Enough distance that radio conditions can be quite different in the two locations.
On CW I had about 25 contacts with EU callers on 20m. As others have mentioned, sometimes the caller were a mass of continuous sound on the exact same frequency, and while you type in their callsign, some of them decide to send their callsigns another few times, just to let you know they are there. On 40m I had some local contacts on ssb and cw. I looked for an F who was spotted on 7.026 and heard EA2DT work him, but could not hear the activator. Manuel was not strong himself.
Hope you have a good day with all that extra height. Take care going through doorways! 
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA /4 this week
Yes - same lake. Nice quiet spot. There is another campground next to Lake Wardell by the main road that is very popular - 40-50 vehicles there at moment. And this one 1km along the canal with about 8 vehicles in 5 times the space.
Lovely spot - ducks out of one window, Aoraki - Mt Cook (ZL3/CB-001) out of the other. Now there’s a peak I will never activate!
Yes Stephan, that would be great. I hope to be earlier that advertised, but I am cycling, so it’s a bit difficult to be precise.
Sunday 1 May, I will activate Mt McDonald VK1/AC-048 from 0500 UTC to 0645 UTC.
Sunset is at 0720 UTC, 1720h local.
Wx forecast for Saturday, around the VK1 region is thunderstorms and heavy rain. Saturday is out for me.
73, Andrew VK1AD
I could hear snippets of you above my local noise, but never enough to complete the contact. I did hear G0VWP’s side of his QSO though! Will try head out to a summit in the next week or so to try cash in on these moments.
Currently there are four enthusiastic VK activators lined up for Sunday commencing at 0500 UTC. I expect the numbers will increase.
Andrew VK1AD
No need to wait. Martin HB9GVE was the best activator signal from Europe with Ed DD5LP the runner up. I did hear some other HB activators but qsb chopped them up badly so a complete callsign not copied and too hard to get a report with so little being copied. Sorry. Need more sunspots.
Plenty of loud home stations on long path.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Ooh tempting! Looks like another early ‘o clock
The activation of this morning lead only to two DX contacts on 20m: @ZL4NVW at 5:33z and @VK5PAS at 6:02z. The signal of ZL4NVW was only 3/3, but when I heard him later, he went up to 5/6. I could copy VK5PAS with 5/7 and he gave me 5/5.
I heard some other strong VK and ZL stations, also on 17m, but not one single SOTA activator, so no S2S DX at all for me.
I used my typical home-brew EFHW in inverted-L configuration with max. 6m height, pointing towards N/E. The end of the 20m long radiator wire was about 2m above ground. 10W SSB was the power.
First I wanted to quickly build a quarter wave vertical, but finally decided do it with my all-round EFHW and look how it goes.
Next time, I’ll definitely try a quarter wave vertical as @HB9GVW did, with who I had a short S2S QSO. I’m really interested how it worked for him.
According the log of @DD5LP, he worked four VK3 stations, three on 17m and one on 20m. Well done Ed! Unfortunately, I could not copy Ed, not even on 40m.
I’m partly blaming the K index with a value of 4, which I think was also the reason for the pretty bad conditions I experienced later on my second summit. On the other side, probably because of the nice weather, I had a total of 20 S2S QSOs in the log, which doesn’t happen every day. All in all, it was great to make a new experience and I enjoyed the typical Spring weather on both summits.
Unfortunately, Fraser @MM0EFI activated while I was hiking to my second summit, but I’m sure we’ll get soon a S2S into the log.
Thanks a lot to all the chasers and activators!
73 Stephan
Sorry Stephan, I was early and I didn’t hang around on 20m too long this morning. The K was at 4 when I was QRV and it was tough.
Well done on getting some DX though 
