Yesterday Paul, VK3HN, Owen, VK3EAR and myself, VK3KR went out to Mount Torbrek (VK3/VN-001) near Eildon. It’s a ten point summit and remote, steep and high enough to be an excellent choice to celebrate Paul achieving 1000 activator points!
We have a New Mountain Goat
Fortunately the road was open and free of fallen timber all the way into the Barnewall Plains Campground so we drove all the way to the trailhead.
The weather was perfect for the vigorous, 1hr 20min climb to the summit, sunny but not too hot. With our stations set up, Paul started calling on 40m CW with his homebrew SP-9 transceiver and a 1/4 wave vertical. Results were not good so we suspect the ionosphere wasn’t in a cooperative mood.
Meanwhile, I made contacts on 10m CW while Owen worked a steady stream of callers on 20m and 40m SSB, using his KX3 to a dipole. Paul then moved his SP-9 to the dipole and found a bit more success on CW.
Needing one more contact for his fourth - and elevation to Mountain Goat status - we connected the KX3 back to the dipole and Paul called on SSB, to be answered by Peter, VK3PF. It was fitting that Paul’s most active chaser (and mine!) was the contact that completed the activation!
Well done Paul - it’s noteworthy that over 90% of Paul’s SOTA activations have been done with homebrew rigs. If you check his blog https://vk3hn.wordpress.com/ you can see his progress as the rigs get smaller and more sophisticated. SP-9 is a compact, 5-band CW/SSB transceiver with 5W out. It’s a no-compromise design with a commercial crystal filter and full bandpass and lowpass filtering for each band. There should be a special badge on the SOTA Database for achieving MG using mostly homebrew gear!
There couldn’t be a better way to celebrate! Thanks to all the callers and to Paul, who carried the beers up in his pack to surprise us on the summit.
73 David VK3KR
