With blisteringly hot weather in VK, a number of us nevertheless ventured out to summits today to get that special advantage of activation points for both 2018 and 2019.
I activated Bowning Hill, only about 15km away from home, 4 points on offer and absolutely no shade from the hot sun. By the time I left the summit at about 1pm local time, the temperature was over 30C, possibly 35C, I forgot to look. I operated from my sun shelter and made 25 QSO, 17 of which were S2S [edit: 22 were S2S - log was incomplete]. There were more contacts to be made, but the heat was very difficult to operate in. A shady forest setting next year for me!
4 contacts on 1296ssb, 5 on 146.5fm, 8 on 7 ssb, 3 on 7cw, 4 on 14 cw, one on 14 ssb and one on 50ssb. Not a big score but enough on either side of midnight UTC (11AM local, very hot) to earn points for both years.
From Ranginui I made 42 contacts and 19 summit to summits. Enjoyed the summit but sadly tye noise floor was too high on 14 MHz so that meant catching VK summits would be hard. I managed to get Gerard on 21 MHz. There were 10 zl summits active today at rollover.
Fantastic day out - if not a little warm - 35 the shade - 817 was too hot to hold when packing up even after being covered in a bandana to keep the sun off.
57 contacts from the summit of Mt Ainslie VK1/AC-040. Today’s haul pushed my chaser points over the 1000 into shack sloth-dom.
57 SSB QRP contacts across 20/40/2/.7. Tell me again the bands are dead?
Thanks for all of your friendship and RF during 2018. I hope to make 2019 even better.
A very good day to be out and on the air! Many thanks to everyone who joined in - all contacts were valuable additions to the log. This was my operating position on VK3/VE-007.
Great Day out in vk5 too I went to Mt Gawler near Adelaide a 1 pointer so worth the trip to gain an extra point. I made 28 qso’s over the two time slots and was pleased to find 40m was working in close for a change and I was able to qso with the 3 other vk5 activators out on Hallett Hill and Mt Lofty. I was able to work VK6NU on 20m just before utc midnight then straight after,he became my last qso for 2018 and first qso for 2019 and an S2S as well. I could not believe my phone screen at one time I was checking for other station Spots and the screen was scrolling with all the Spots passing through, I had to scroll down to find someone who was on my screen seconds before. I forgot to check how many Spots went through per hour when it all died down. All I have to do now is think of a 1 pointer I can get to safely in summer and save it for Dec 31 this year, maybe one with a wind farm they have good clear roads on them. Thanks everyone great effort.
Ian CZ …
Thank you very much for the S2S with JA from VK6, sorry you did not get more VK or ZL stations in the log. Always good to work you and hope for many more contacts during 2019. Nice photographs.
For New Year’s Day I went to my regular annual haunt Mt Elliot VK2/HU-093 which is near Gosford about 60km north of Sydney. Skies were clear all day and the temperature was hot with a slight breeze. In the morning I was able to use a picnic table for operating as it was sheltered from the sun by overhanging high trees. In the afternoon I set up my camp chair under a low tree. The rig used was the KX3 with a ZS6BKW doublet at 9m high.
Activating started 75 mins before UTC rollover at 11am local time and there was already plenty of activity, mainly on 40m. After spotting and working some chasers I got stuck into chasing S2S contacts. Many frequency and band (and mode) changes made it rather frantic. By 0000z 23 summits had been logged including 4 ZLs and VK6. There was so much activity it was not possible to get around all those being spotted so I missed some ZLs (amongst others).
The pace didn’t relax in the new day, at least not for the first hour. I was hunting and pecking my way through all the spots that came up on VK port-a-log. Sometimes the other station was busy so I’d move on to the next one and try to remember to come back. A few activators did not spot at all so were extra hard to work. Every so often I would spot myself and hope those activators would come running, but it was not completely successful.
After the first hour of the new year I stayed around to catch some stations doing second activations. There are no easily accessible summits nearby Mt Elliot so moving was not an option for me. Instead I was able to settle back, have lunch and see what turned up.
Due to the presence of a good E-layer the higher bands were running hot with short skip. 15m was particularly busy. Even on 12m which is normally very quiet I was able to work into VK3 and VK4. By 4pm the fresh S2S opportunities were becoming rare so I packed up. All up I’d made 91 contacts with 59 summits worked and 32 WWFF references. Bands used were 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m and 12m. SSB was used for 78 and CW for 13 contacts. Last year I made 103 contacts for 47 S2S so a big increase in summits worked this year.
Fun day out. Thanks for all the calls!
