The 20 & 60 mins are ‘constants’ in the spreadsheet for estimates of the on-air duration for 2m and 2m/HF activations respectively. You’ve touched on the one variable that’s less predictable than all the others. Sometimes I might get a long pile-up and other times - particularly with 2m only - i might get only 4 or 5 local contacts so I quit earlier.
The extreme cases are the highest summits with long walk-ins and furthest from home and where (particularly in winter) I want a quick activation (so 2m only).
Add to that, unfortunately I have domestic constraints that often limit my total away time (which the spreadsheet flags in red if more than 5 hours). If a particular summit has long driving and walking times, that puts the squeeze on how much time I can activate. Bad weather is another factor.
Interesting reading on how everyone else sets up and how long it takes. There are also mentions of wildcards to the variables that extend the time. Under somewhat ideal conditions even without trees for support it takes me about 5 minutes (give or take a minute or so). Here is a video I made Field Set-Up of an end fed half wave antenna - YouTube during which I set up an inverted V without using a tree for support. Instead I used a guy ring similar to what has already been shown elsewhere on this thread.
Gerald, I just look at a map and have a knack of guessing how long it will take me. Even on my three day hike over the Cairngorms, I was just one hour out after 55 miles of walking and that was all on the last day because I varied the route slightly. Of course, last week in the Angus glens, I got it horribly wrong. The iced road took 45 minutes longer to drive and the thawing hill snow slowed me down a bit, but even with a spreadsheet I guess it would have still been the same outcome.
Anyone use Naismiths rule for estimating hill climbing times?
I use it as a starting point - although there are a lot of variations. I can still manage about 1min for 10m climbing and after that usually 5km/hr although I tend to add for difficult terrain. For me if I miss the alert time it is usually what has happened before I started walking - left home late, stuck in traffic, planned parking spot isn’t workable…Although I don’t use a spreadsheet for planning I do have detailed notes - usually driving time, parking location (Google Street View…), spare parking location, a plan “b” hill if the wx is worse that I hoped and the time I expect to get back home! I have also started to finalise the kit I’m carrying just before I set off, so I usually pack everything and then remove stuff. I vary the shelters I take (I always have an emergency bag), the amount of water or drinks I’m carrying, and sometimes I have thrown out a couple of antennas having decided that due to the combination of rubbish weather and lack of time I’ll try less bands… but I think I’m turning into a bit of a wimp as I think I’m slowly turning into a fair weather walker… ( I have subscription to OS maps in the UK and when I plot a route on the website the timings seem very accurate … or is it that I just speed up to match the timings…) 73. Paul.
I’ve been making a few lunch-break activations lately which gives me 30 minutes to set-up, activate, pack-up and eat. These have been successful so far, with no failures so far within the 30 minute window. Mostly just single-band (40m) though occasionally time for a rapid 20m check also to pick up some fast-from-the-blocks VKs.
The eating and activating tend to get combined which leads to recall the maxim:
The time it takes for a chaser to come back to a call is 1 second longer than the time before I stop listening and take another bite of my sandwich.
My normal flat ground rules-of-thumb are:
walking track: 6km/hr
tramping track: 4km/hr
off-track - open bush, riverstone riverbed or good ridgeline: 3km/hr
walkable bushbash: 2km/hr
crawling bushbash: <1km/hr
Re the altitude gains:
With steep gradient the ‘add 1hr/600m’ sounds about right for a tramping track. On a maintained walking track I’d be closer to ‘add 1hr/1000m’.
But the effect of altitude gain varies hugely with vegetation and gradient.
e.g.
encountering thick flax on a steep uphill climb can easily drop me for 2-3km/h to well under 1km / hr. Whereas encountering flax on a downhill climb of the same route makes only a small difference.
And 1000m of hand-over-hand climbing adds far more time that 1000m of gentle gradient.
So yes - a good start point, but MMV dependent on a lot of factors.
“Erecting the pole with guys placed at the top of the first section takes about a minute…”
“After that I get the doublet or the linked dipole mounted on the top section of the pole, attach feedline, lift the antenna up. Take pegs if needed out to the ends of the antenna and attach to trees or the pegs in the ground if there are no trees or they are at inconvenient points.”
That’s exactly how I set up the 10m telescopic pole too!! Whilst I use 3 guys ropes, I keep four zip ties at the top of the first section just in case one fails
I stopped using it years ago. Guessing was good enough for most things I did. However, the last year or so I started using it again for SOTA alerts for as I realised my guesses might be good enough for me but probably not for chasers.
I did three summits yesterday and I took photos of each stage of the activation so I could later review the timings. This was easy to do as my phone camera names each photo with the time the photo is taken. I then compared the time of the summit arrival photo with either the first QSO or the first self-spot time.
VK3/VC-009 Mt Bride set up time was 20 minutes
VK3/VC-011 Britannia Range set up was 16 minutes
VK3/VC-016 Mt Beenak was 21 minutes
My set up was an inverted L antenna with L match, FT817ND with external battery and mobile phone hot spot and tablet for VK port-a-log logging.
At the first two site I lashed the base of my SOTABEAMS Tactical Mini 6m pole to a convenient log. The third site didn’t have a convenient log so the antenna wire was placed in the tree branches with the pole.
HF conditions were poor and I made 7 QSOs at the first two summits and 6 QSOs at the last.
Looking at the photos of your kit laying there in the leaf litter reminded me of the stories my great aunt Ciss used to tell me when I was a boy in the 60’s about the snakes and spiders she would encounter around her Australian bungalow in the 1920s. And so I was wondering if these creatures are a problem for activators like you standing or sitting around in rural Australia.
We have snakes, they are venomous. The general advice to avoid getting bitten is to leave them alone and don’t go putting limbs, hands or feet into places where snakes may be.
The few snakes I have seen in the wild have either been crossing a road or river to get from one place to another, or sunning themselves in the middle of a track.
If I need to walk through the scrub I’ll usually be clearing it as I go with my hiking poles and I hope the vibrations of me and the poles will move on any snakes.
At VK3/VC-016, Mt Beenak I was wondering if snakes would be around and I saw a flattened black snake on the gravel road about 25 m from my operating position as I was walking back down the hill.
As for spiders - not much to worry about there. We do have some nasty ones among us but they are easy to avoid and, according to the Victorian Government health advice, there has been no recorded deaths from spider bites since the introduction of antivenom.
All things considered, I am more likely to be seriously injured from hitting a kangaroo while driving to an activation than anything else native to Australia.
Yeah, I’ve read about such incidents. We have a similar problem here in the UK with deer. With no natural predators their numbers have ballooned in the last 50 years in many parts of the country, the largest number for over 1000 years apparently. Many are killed or injured in road collisions every year and a smaller number of drivers or passengers, leading to a demand for increased culling.
