The 2nd ZL3 10 pointer we’ve activated collectively in 6 years!
Big hills, plenty of goats and monster summit to summit solar minimum DX!
hi chris,
love watching your videos … brings back a lot of memories of my visit to your beautiful country in 2007. congrats on your dx-contact with north america! always a pleasure to get some dx into the log!
maybe you could give me some detailled information on what microphone you are using on your activations. it looks very lightweight and small. i still use the original mic from elecraft on my activations, but it’s almost as big and heavy as the complete trx …
73 martin, oe5reo
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Thank you mate!
Absolutely - you’re dead right the stock microphone is a real brick of a thing!
It’s really simple - I’ve just taken a headset from a dirt cheap Baofeng like this:
I cut the headphone portion off so I was just left with the PTT button and the mic, and I cut that weird dual plug off and wired it up with a standard 3.5mm plug.
It weighs something like 20 grams off the top of my head, incredibly light!
I stole the idea from Adam (K6ARK) who does awesome YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiVRd1ydpJCKLFtNvPUpisg)
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Awesome views and great video again. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve seen I’m not the only weird man on Earth wearing my wristwatch over my sleeve 
I see you are using earbuds during your operation while you camera keeps recording image and audio from a few meter away off you. How do you manage the audio recording while using your earbuds?
Congrats for the 10 pointer and the DX and I’ll be looking forward to watching you next great, great video.
73,
Guru
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Thank you - amazing video and a reminder that the mountains will still be there at the end of our lockdown, even if they are piddling little ones in comparison 
. PS I think if you were UK based it looks like you would be fine on the summit for the EMF risk assessment, even the goats were a long way away! 73 Paul
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Chris, thanks for taking us along. Really enjoyed it.
Would you happen to have a GPS track you can upload to https://www.sotamaps.org/tracks ?
Or a ZL online topo map. Opentopo (and therefore SOTL.as) is not having a lot of details about the area.
I guess it was somehow like that?
Just in case I happen to visit ZL one day 
73 Joe
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Haha thanks mate - I normally don’t wear the watch over my sleeve but I was using the thumb loops on my top to keep sun off my hands. I ended up just wrecking the top on the handles of my trekking poles (where my palms were now covered in material from the top) though so I stopped! 
It depends on the situation how I record the audio but in this instance I was pretty safe and the weather wasn’t terrible so I recorded from 2 audio sources. I’ve got a cheap Sony audio recorder sitting in line between my KX2 and my earbuds which picks up everything except for my SSB voice and the ambient sounds. When I edit it I just use a mixture of the two sources depending on what I’m after at that moment!
Thanks again - great to get ZL3 its 2nd 10 pointer!
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Thank you mate!
Yep I should do off the watch, your route is pretty close except that you can’t run that direct to Kelly’s Hut you run around that NE spur. I’ve got a bunch of GPX routes I need to upload now that I think about it!
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Great video, 73.
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A great video, very enjoyable. I liked the sound recordings. As someone still learning CW and at early stage it was reassuring to be able to make out the callsigns and some of the interchange, for example picking out “S2S” and “BK” at the end of a transmission although I was thrown by the “X” until I realised it was “TU”.
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Much obliged sir!
Haha yes indeed, to be fair I threw down a reasonably “over the top” number of TUs
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Nice one. I keep expecting to reach the top of an unactivated Otago peak to find you sitting there with your radio! You seem to be several steps ahead of me reading from the same to-do list!
Speaking of which we’re now collectively up to 5 activated ten pointers in ZL3. 5 down 351 to go. which I guess makes it your turn (unless someone else feels like a go)!
Matt - ZL4NVW
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Wow. Stunning video, stunning views! Thank you so much. Should have done a bit of SOTA when I was in your beautiful country in 2013 - I had plenty of fun operating from there with my KX3 at “ground level” in any case, including a CW contact in the PACC contest with my home country (Netherlands) using QRP (off 8 internal Alkaline cells…) and a “crappy dipole” strung across some trees at Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula.
73,
Wouter Jan PE4WJ
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Haha gidday mate!
I’ve had a bit much on recently but I’m just casually trucking along at this point, the hills aren’t going anywhere!
Thank you my friend!