Happy New Year to all.
I intend to operate from Mt Ginini vk1/ac-008 for the VK VHF/UHF field day on 10/11 Jan. I will take SOTA compliant equipment too and will operate that from about 0800 Friday until 0100 Sunday or slightly later.
I will have a linked dipole for hf bands plus a 1/4 wave vertical for 20m that I have used before from this site. See alerts for more details. Operation is subject to weather - the summer thunderstorm activity around this range is quite severe at times. I don’t like being near big blue sparks. They make my hair stand on end.
I can usually spot from that site but it is patchy. SMS is more reliable than data, due to it using lower frequencies. So at times I will rely on spots put up by those who hear and work me.
For 20m operators, the long path seems to go dead very soon after sundown here, or about 0915. The preceding hour is usually ok or better. I will run the IC703 on 20m, cw and ssb. I have a cw filter in this rig and am happy to work on cw.
As this is primarily a vhf/uhf weekend, SOTA is a kind of luxury extra that may have to give way if interesting vhf conditions take priority. Nevertheless I will welcome any S2S or chaser contacts into Europe.
Andrew
vk1da this weekend