For the 2026 UTC Rollover SOTA Party I headed up to Talbot Peak, VK3/VT-010. It’s over 10 years since I last activated Talbot Peak, but not much has changed, other than my body is 10 years older.
I left the car at about 7:50 AM and arrived at the summit at 10:25 AM. The track up is a narrow path through a mixture of trees including Mountain Ash, Silver Wattle, and Snowgums. A bit of limbo gymnastics was required on a couple of occasions.
Upon arrival I set up my inverted L antenna with my 6m pole leaning in a tree near the trig point and connected up my FT817ND.
I made 19 QSOs, 17 being S2S into VK3, VK1, VK2 and VK5 before UTC roll over and 6 QSOs, 3 being S2S, after roll over, all on 40m.
After qualifying the summit for 2026, I packed away the Inverted L and set up a 2m/7cm droopy ground plane antenna. The antenna was made with a Diamond dual band antenna, that normally resides on my car, three lengths of 10 x 3 mm strip aluminum, an SO-239 joiner and a stainless-steel hose clamp. All this was strapped to a fallen branch, that was then strapped to the trig point.
I made 6 QSOs on 2m SSB, 4 being S2S, with the most distant being about 115 km away.
I left the summit at about 12:30 pm and, after stopping near Mt Erica for 2 hours to activate VKFF-6372 Baw Baw Plateau Remote & Natural Area, I arrived back at the car at about 4:30 pm and drove 2 1/2 hours back home.
For my next 2026 SOTA challenge summit, I’m thinking of a 3 element horizontal 2m Yagi and a vertical 2m dipole that can mount on my 6m SOTAbeam pole.