Finally had a morning where I could get out and climb a hill! Decided to try Mt Tuggeranong VK1/AC-038, an easy walk and not too far a drive. Parked at the substation on Callister St in Theodore, as most people have in the past!

It’s a pretty easy walk up, somewhat steep in places, still walking, not climbing. I got to the top and was ready only half an hour after my alert said I would be, hope to improve on that next time!

I started out with 2m, as I knew a few activators were going to be out and about on summits and managed to grab a few of them, an amateur newly interested in SOTA, and a few of the usual VK1 chasers. I tried out 70cm again, which is my favourite even though contacts are a bit sparse, and VK1MA and VK1NAM found me there. Both mentioned that my 817 seems to be a bit off frequency, I’ve now installed the TCXO-9 unit, hopefully that’ll make a difference for the next one!

I’ve now gone through one of the many SOTA rights of passage, my squidpole’s top element snapped as I was putting the antenna through :(

So, a hasty bodge with some coreflute stuck on the end of the pole, and I was back on the air in the HF bands. It was quite windy up the top, probably 30Kts plus, blew the antenna around a bit, and pulled the it out of the tuner a couple of times, only once in the middle of a QSO fortunately!

Another problem with the wind was with my notebook, it kept getting blown about, especially when I was attempting to point the 70cm beam, have a QSO and write the log at the same time! So, I may have some reports and names incorrect!

Andrew VK1NAM mentioned that he has a nice method of clamping yagis to squidpoles, which I’ll have to emulate soon. I’ll have to modify my feed lines, as they’re quite short at the moment. Maybe a UHF connector stuffed into the end of the boom, and a good length of rg213? Will have to think, I’ll blog about it when I figure it out :)

Again, I forgot to take photos until I was packing up, perhaps I should put a checklist together for an activation, so I don’t forget these things!

A successful activation, and lots of fun! Thanks to all the chasers! And many thanks for the Summit 2 Summit activators, in particular VK1EM and VK2MWP for pulling out the HT as soon as they got to the top of VK2/ST-008, managed to grab them before I had to leave the summit in order to get home in time for family things!

Here’s my log for your scrutiny.