Saturday 22 August was a busy day for me with things other than radio to do later in the day. I decided I’d keep progressing on the 2026 SOTA challenge and head to a nearby summit, VK3/VT-078 Gentle Annie, about 50km away as the crow flies. By road it’s about 64 km to the trailhead with a 1.2 km steep, muddy track to the summit.
Arriving at the junction at the base of the hill I was greeted with light rain falling.
I have a simple rule for hiking - never start hiking in the rain. If it rains after I have started hiking then I’ll deal with it, but it makes no sense to leave the comfort of a warm, dry vehicle to immediately get wet.
While waiting for the rain to clear I decided to test my Personal Locator Beacon, PLB. This is something I should do every couple of months, but I hadn’t done since I purchased my second PLB in August 2024. I downloaded the PLB manual to my phone and read the test procedure by which time the rain had stopped. Stepping away from the car I ran the full test, that includes RF and GPS testing, and the test failed. I re-read the instructions to be sure I had done it right which I had and, as detailed in the instructions, I repeated the test and it passed.
Comforted by the knowledge that if it all goes south, I can summon help, I packed my backpack with FT817, amplifier, batteries, tarpaulin, hourglass antenna and, for its first activation, a dual hourglass antenna.
The summit is named Gentle Annie, but there is nothing gentle about accessing Gentle Annie.
The journey to the summit starts at a seasonally closed gate. These gates are common in forest and park areas in Victoria and are locked from mid-June until early November. The idea of closing tracks through the winter and spring is to stop them being damaged.
I have activated this summit seven times before and only once, in 2014, has the track up not been a rutted or churned-up mess. In 2014 I found the track had been repaired and graded a couple of months earlier, and I was able to drive my 2012 RAV4 AWD to the top. Today it was a challenge just to walk up the muddy track.
The track starts at about 450m ASL and rises to 687m ASL with some sections being steeper than others. With my hiking poles and new boots, I was able to make the climb, and descent, without slipping over in the mud.
After reaching the activation zone, about 20 minutes before 0000 UTC, I set up my 6m pole with the dual hourglass antenna along with the FT817 and battery. Normally I lay a tarpaulin on the ground and then set my station on top, but today, I just set up on the grass and kept the tarpaulin for sheltering under.
I managed 6 QSOs before UTC rollover and 15 QSOs after rollover. Geoff @VK3SQ was keen to work me, so I added the amplifier and second battery to the setup, but we were unable to make the QSO.
While calling Geoff I noticed the FT817 was showing less than 12-volt input from the 7Ah LiFePO4 battery during heavy modulation. I haven’t seen this before with this battery that I have been using since August 2022. This raises two possibilities, the battery is staring to fail, or I had not charged fully after it was last used. I’ll load test it during the week and see how it performs.
The rain was intermittent and after about 1 hour on the hill I decided it was time to head back down to the car.
Due to the poor weather conditions, I was unable to compare the performance of the two hourglass antennas, however I did confirm that the dual hourglass antenna works.
From the 21 QSOs logged the closest was 41 km and the most distant was 70 km.
In late November, after the access road reopens, I am planning a visit to VK3/VT-028 Mt Horsfall to do some comparisons between a 5-element Yagi, the single hourglass, and the dual hourglass antenna.
) and rainy weather.
. Thanks for sharing and for writing up another interesting story around them. I am very pleased to see another 
!
