So, here’s the story from the other side of the world / QSO. As Matt said, we had arranged to both be active on a summit at the same time, which for me meant 6AM local time. I picked Knockmealdown (EI/IS-011) as it’s almost 800m, reasonably close by, and a straight forward hike up. Unfortunately though it meant an 2:45 AM alarm clock and a walk up in the dark, a first for me.
The forecast was good, with some clouds, but low winds, which makes a nice change after a pretty bad winter here for weekend winds. So, the hike began in the dark with my new shiny head torch and after about 30 mins the first signs of light appeared in the sky. Unfortunately, I missed the sunrise, as I was ascending from the western side, but it still looked pretty nice once I got to the saddle and was able to look east.
I had read about a 20m delta loop here on the reflector, and decided to try one for this activation. So Friday evening I built this as it suited the 7m pole I have. The 22.5m length seems a bit short though, as my one resonated at 14.3 MHz, but its close enough, as my KX3 will tune pretty much anything.
I setup on the summit, wx was good - wind almost still and fog / clouds coming and going with sunshine in between. Pretty much dry with just morning dew that was slippy and seemed to wet everything. It’s nice and wide on the summit and it’s facing the sea, with the ridge running roughly NW to SE, so giving a broadside across mainly sea to ZL via LP. All directions point to ZL, as it’s almost the antipode to EI, but I reckoned the more sea the better. I saw Matts spot on 20m for ssb, tuned him in and there he was. Weak but workable. I sent a reply to his CQ and got in first time. Easy peasy 
In my haste I realised afterward that I had forgotten to plug in the external battery, so was running on the KX3 internal batteries, so was only using 5W. It was also my first time using a mic on the new to me KX3, so I hoped that the previous owner had the compression etc setup properly. They did obviously. Job done. S2S to ZL confirmed. I QSYed and put out a few calls on ssb, but no DX takers, only 1 HA reply. The rest of EU must have been stil in bed. I then went to CW and stayed there for the rest of the activation, which gave me 39 QSO’s and 6 to VK (one HEMA summit - so not quite S2S to VK, ) and 1 to JH, another first for me.
The 20m loop seems to have done the business, but it takes a lot of space. To keep the lower section taut and at the recommended 2m above the ground needs long guy lines, I measured 40 paces between pegs, so not suited to a lot of summits. I must do some simulation to see how it radiates on other bands.
First light
Obligatory summit pic
The 20m delta loop.
Panorama on the descent as the cloud started to build