Sunday, 2nd August, 2016
Sunday 2nd August was the day for the annual VK1 SOTA party, so along with a good number of the VK SOTA gang I decided to go out and activate a Summit with the objective of making as many S2S contacts as possible, especially with the Canberrans. The weather in the preceding weeks had been cold and wet, but the forecast for the day was excellent.
Considering all that previous rain, many of my favourite Summits would be hard to get to due to mud and generally unpleasant driving/walking conditions, so I decided to activate Mt Granya as it has a nicely graded access road with no creek crossings or other hazards. I’ve activated this one several times before so had a good idea of conditions on the Summit.
Propagation forecasts indicated that there would be next to no possibility of NVIS operation on 7MHz, so I decided to take a 40 metre long wire and operate mainly on 3.5MHz, with forays onto 7MHz and higher to pick up those stations a bit further afield.
Getting the wire up into the trees took a while, but in the end it was up, draped artistically across three separate trees in a roughly northeasterly direction. The Barrett 940 really liked it, and tuned it in less than 2 seconds.
I set myself up in a patch of sunlight and was comfortably warm without the need for the heavy winter coat, beanie and fingerless gloves that I’d brought along.
Conditions on the air were pretty much as expected and I focused mainly on 3.5MHz as planned.
Stations worked on 3.5MHz CW:
VK2AOH/P (S2S VK2/CW-043), VK1DA/P (S2S VK1/AC-040),
Stations worked on 3.5MHz SSB:
VK1DI/P (S2S VK1/AC-039), VK1VIC/P (S2S VK1/AC-032), VK1AD/P (S2S VK1/AC-032), VK2IO/P (S2S VK2/ST-006), VK1MBE/2 (S2S VK2/ST-001),
Stations worked on 7MHz CW:
VK7CW, VK5EEE,
Stations worked on 7MHz SSB:
VK5PAS/P (S2S VK5/SE-016),
I was planning to have a go at 14MHz but the Barrett 940 began to complain about low battery voltage before I could get there, so I called it a day. By that time it wasn’t far off the time when all the VK1s would be heading to the footy club for lunch!
VK2IB Amateur Radio 