I’ve only ever been up Maple Mountain once which was July 2022 for a SOTA activation. It’s only a 5-10min drive away and now that we have more daylight hours it is a good fit for activating after work.
Last time I hiked up from the eastern side which was quite steep but great ocean views. This time I decided to hike from the west up the logging road for a change. It wasn’t as challenging but the views I don’t think were as nice.
I only saw a few mountain bikers during the first 10-15 minutes of the hike. After that didn’t see anyone at all.
Took about 1hr 20m to reach the summit. Awesome weather, about 15c, very sunny but at the summit was quite windy.
I started on 2m and could just barely hear VE7JH and got him in the log. There’s a large communications tower at the summit which I think was causing interference. Kept trying on 2m for about 10 minutes but didn’t hear anything else.
Moved a bit further away from the tower and decided to get on 10m. My buddy VA7BIX is in Western Australia and was doing a POTA activation starting in a few minutes on 10 metres and wanted to see if I could possibly contact him. Got everything setup then realised I forgot a coax adapter and wouldn’t be able to use the FT-891.
This is the second activation in a row that I’ve now forgotten something that affected my activation so I was a bit discouraged not the end of the world.
Decided to get out the Yagi beam and try 2m some more. Pointed the beam towards Victoria which is the largest city here on the island and got VA7OTC who I’ve activated a POTA with before so that was great.
Unfortunately that was the last contact of the day. I called CQ for quite a while after that but nothing. I tried UHF at the end just in case but also nothing.
Packed up and headed down the mountain. Was hiking down just as the sun was setting which was really nice. Saw a baby deer on the way down
Fortunately this summit is close by and not too much of a hike to go up so I will head back up again shortly to activate it. I think I need to get a little bag full of adapters/connectors and always take that with me.
Overall still a good way to spend a Thursday afternoon.
