A public holiday Monday with lovely weather, and some restless kids, so I took them up the hills to let Mum have a bit of a rest.

An easy drive up to the summit, taking a bit over one and a half hours. Up the top there are a large number of antennas for various radio services, including the local repeater, VK1RGI. They do interfere a bit, my cheapo chinese HT didn’t cope too well, and got some interference from what sounded like some sort of aircraft service, so I missed a few calls on 2m!

The kids had a pretty good time, and after munching on some sandwidches, settled down with their toys, and I settled down to radios!

On HF, the noises aren’t too bad, and had a successful activation, grabbing 31 QSOs in total, getting VK4,5 and 6 on 20m, and 1,2 and 3 on 40, and got a second Summit to Summit to VK7, qualifying me for a mountain hunter for the region, yay!

The weather up on the summit was lovely, nice and warm, with enough wind that it wasn’t too hot when moving about, and enough to fly my box kite for a while!

The only downside was being distracted by the kids when packing, and leaving my squidpole leaning against the tree I’d tied it to :(

Ah well, Andrew, VK1DA will be up there shortly, hopefully it survives the intervening time and he’s able to bring it back safely!