Activations in New Zealand April/May 2026

Activation Reports Pre-Planning
1

I’m about to visit new Zealand and will be activating summits in ZL1 around Auckland and Wellington, then in ZL3, Picton on the south island, then from the Christchurch area, over a period of almost 2 weeks. I will have 2m ssb/cw as my first preference for contacts, for the current challenge, then 40/30/20/15m SSB/CW. I will be able to work on 2m FM but only after giving ssb/cw a good try.

Activations are listed on sotawatch Alerts. Self spotting as far as possible. Have a data e-sim.

Already have received great support from ZLs and will be spending Saturday 25th April with Warren ZL2AJ activating three summits. Also I joined a vhf contesting group at groups.io, some responses already coming back from members of that group, both north and south.

Looking forward to meeting the ZLs I’ve been working for so many years. My first ever trip to ZL.

73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA (will be using ZL/vk1da on this trip)

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2

…great Andrew, you will love it there, lots of things to do and see.
Enjoy!

Geoff vk3sq

3

A write-up of my trip to New Zealand is now published on my blog, vk1da.blog.
I activated 15 summits over the fortnight and made contacts on 2m ssb on them all. Activity in Christchurch was especially good, with contacts made southwards to Dunedin, about 300km which was a nice surprise. Only on one summit did I make my regulation 4 or more CW contacts, but mostly I was being taken places by the local experts and didn’t want to delay them.
Blog has the fuller story with pics.

73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA

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