Many of us suffer from “Metro Noise” whether it’s interference from equipment in our own homes, the neighbour or the electrical wires running down the street, all of these can cause difficulties in “chasing” a remote QRP operator on a summit.
As I am a member of WICEN, I was asked to assist in an exercise where WICEN CNC (Central Coast) and helpers from other WICEN groups get together to provide safety checkpoints in a horse endurance trial around the village of St Albans in the Central Coast hinterland. There is ZERO cellphone coverage in this area and for the organisers to have commercial communications installed would not only create a cost for them but would also increase their staffing needs as, as well as providing communications we also act as the checkpoint, logging all horse/rider numbers coming through each checkpoint and validating that none have been lost between checkpoints. There are multiple rides taking place at the same time. Each ride of a different length with the top riders and horses taking part in two 40 km rides in the one day. So this is a good fit for WICEN as an exercise and provides safety without which the event simply could not take place.
Manning a checkpoint is often very busy for short periods of time and then there is nothing to do for 45 minutes or an hour. So I decided to take my SOTA gear along and as well as the 2m & 70cm systems for accessing our portable WICEN repeater I also took along the FT817, batteries, linked dipole and squiddy and set up and chased SOTA activators between logging horses through my checkpoint. Generally this worked fine with only a couple of times where I had to drop the 817 mike and grab my checklist for the horses.
Here are a few photos from the set-up – note the 2/70cm and quad band (10/6/2/70) mag mount antennas on the car roof and the linked dipole in the background.
While I had already activated Mt Elliot, activating it again would not gain me any activator points this year but while I had decided to get away from the urban electrical noise, chasing from a SOTA summit rather than you a good portable location, has the advantage of giving other chasers points in the award scheme and I would gain chaser points from any Summit-to-Summit contacts. As I had given a lecture on SOTA to the Central Coast ARC on Saturday, I wanted to be on-air to give any of the lecture attendees who decided to try SOTA chasing, a point and indeed one, Karen VK2AKB was on chasing on Sunday.
The weather forecast was for light showers and for once it was correct, just a few sprinklings of rain en-route to site and a couple of times after I was set up.
But today was to be a very special day as I had quietly crept up on the 1000 chaser points (Shack Sloth) level and being at 993 points by the Friday, I was confident of tipping it over the 1000 through contacts on Saturday. When I saw Glen VK1FB was heading out to Mount Ginini, this was ideal – an 8 pointer that would take me to 1001 points, so I dropped Glen an email and we set up a sked for 9am local when he planned to be on the summit.
With my activation of Mt Elliot on the first day of SOTA in VK2 I had activated in 5 associations (G, DL, OE, VK1 and now VK2), this meant I could apply for the Bronze Mountain Explorer award, which I did a week ago. During last week I was looking through at the various awards, I realised I was also eligible for the 100 point unique summits chased (more wall paper for the shack, so I applied for that as well). To my surprise I also realised I was only one contact away from Mountain Hunter Bronze! Would you believe it on Friday evening I see that Brendan VK4FADI and Glen VK4FSCC will be out at 7:30am(!!) activating Mt Mary Smokes and that would be the one I need to have chased 2 summits in each of 5 associations (VKs1,2,3,4 &5). The only small problem is 7:30 am, when they plan to be on, is about when I would be leaving to go to Mt. Elliot in time for my sked at 9am with Glen. So the night before I packed everything in the car ready to go. At 7:30am I am alert and listening for the VK4 boys. Then exactly on schedule, Brendan VK4FADI/P starts calling CQ at a good 5-3 into my home station. I call and work Brendan and Glen (VK4FSCC/P), that’s the Mountain Hunter in the bag and I quickly close down the home station and dash to the car to get up to Mt. Elliot.
Summit activation –
As it turns out I had a good run taking about 10 minutes less than normal to get to site, I grab my packs and head down the trail to descend 25m out of and back into the activation area and (out of breath) return to my usual activation spot, where a clear track has been beaten through the brush from previous tests and the last activation. The antenna goes up first, followed by the chairs and lastly the rig itself. I have about 10 minutes to spare and tune around 40 to check I can hear OK. This time I hear Glen VK4FSCC calling CQ (now up at 5-5 from the better location) and so decide to give him and Brendan a call. I will not gain any points from these calls as I had already worked them, but this would give them points for a Summit to Summit contact. Most importantly this wont kick the total over the 1000 point mark. I wanted that to be my contact with Glen VK1FB as agreed and indeed about 15 minutes later after chatting to Andrew VK2UH on Glen and my agreed sked frequency, there was Glen with a solid 5-9 signal on his new antenna. That was it – 1005 chaser points achieved!
So now I could relax and enjoy the activation both before and after UTC change-over. Apparently my second contact with Marshall VK3MRG/P (who was portable from the banks of the Yarra) tipped him over the 1000 chaser points as well, that was a nice surprise – this has really turned out to be a special day.
I tried 20m and 30m as well. I was disappointed with 20m with no contacts despite spotting and calling, calling, calling but when I moved to 30m I bagged 5 contacts a couple who reported they could not quite hear me on 40m but 30m was fine. This is a relief as my previous attempt to get onto 30m from Canoelands Ridge the previous Sunday failed with errors being displayed on the FT817. After a reset to factory defaults, all seems fine now. The SOTABeams Band-Hopper linked dipole seems to be working fine. I wonder if I should modify it to add 12m to its current 20,30,40 & 80m capabilities?
As usual an important part of any activation is making a few pictures or videos, this time I have more radio “footage” of contacts I made and listened to – perhaps you are one of the stations I “caught” on video?
I’d like to put out a big thanks to all of the activators and chasers who have made my participation in the SOTA scheme such an enjoyable and pleasant one. I’d like to thank particularly Glen VK1FB/P for tipping my score over the 1000 mark and Brendan VK4FADI and Glen VK4FSCC for getting me my Bronze Mountain Hunter award but of course I would never have got near these scores without the whole community of activators and helpful chasers guiding me to these levels. It’s taken me just over 6 months to get to Shack Sloth. Now that I’ve started activating, I suspect i will most likely need nearer to 6 years to get to Mountain Goat (if I ever do). I know this is a part of the hobby that I am really enjoying and it’s mainly because of the kindness and politeness of all of the rest of you helping each other along. Something that I try to emulate.
List of stations worked –
40 metres.
VK4FSCC/P – Glen (S2S)
VK4FADI/P – Brendan (S2S)
VK2UH – Andrew
VK1FB/P – Glen (S2S)
VK3FPSR – Peter
VK2YW – John
VK2MEV /QRP – Brenton (2W)
VK3PF – Peter
VK4GSF /QRP – George (7W)
VK3MRG/P – Marshall
VK1MA – Matt
VK5LA – Andy
VK2JCC – Colin
VK5PAS – Paul
VK1MDC – Marc
VK2GKA / QRP (5W)
VK1RX – Al
VK2AKB / QRP – Karen (10W?)
VK3YE / Pedestrian Mobile – Peter
VK1MA – Matt
VK3DET – Ernie
30 metres.
VK3DET – Ernie
VK3PF – Peter
VK4BG – Glen
VK3KAN/P QRP – Rik
VK5LA – Andy
Awards
(Thanks Barry GM4TOE for sending these so quickly)
As I had already done a “reccie” on Canoelands a few weeks previously, this should have been an easy activation, however after my “reccie” I checked and unfortunately the spot I had used would not be valid as between the actual summit and my spot the ground dropped under the 25m activation zone. So I had to find another spot. I was not eager to get to the actual summit with it’s 33KV electricity tower sitting on private land. I did a “flood” on Google Earth and it turns out that a lot of land prior to the summit falls into the activation area. Using Google Maps – Street view option I search along the ridge and found an area that I took to be a water treatment plant of some sort with easy access from the road. As you’ll see on the video below this was NOT a water treatment plant however my choice of location could not be too bad with a microwave relay tower located across the road.
In any case an early start was needed to get to Canoelands prior to UTC change-over and allowing for the fact that my chosen spot might not work out to be correct. Canoelands is about a 2 hour drive from my home so a 7am departure was needed.
The VK2JI/P operation.
As it turned out the trip took a little less time and the spot I had chosen turned out fine and I was operational before my posted time of 9am local.
This is another EASY summit, literally drive up, walk out and back into the activation area with your equipment, set-up and operate. A good option for a first time activator and in fact one of only two SOTA summits in the Sydney Metro region of the VK2 association.
As well as 40m on this trip I intended to try to get some 30m contacts, but was not to be with the FT-817 not putting out any power on that band and displaying “TX error” at one point. I also tried 20m with unfortunately no contacts. It looks like I’m going to need to go out later in the day to get 30m or 20m contacts I think. The 30m issue in the radio was fixed after a reset to factory default settings after returning home, so it’s ready for the next time.
Activity was good and after working a lot of stations both before and after UTC change-over including several summit-to-summit contacts, I took a few photos for the blog before leaving ahead of a light shower coming across the area.
I also managed to record Ian VK1DI/P working a couple of stations on 40m, but being on my own, was unable to find a way of videoing any of my own QSOs.
In conclusion, it was a successful day. Once again proving out the equipment so that I will be able to take the absolute minimum and know it will work when I get to activate a more difficult summit.
Stations worked – all on 40m.
Colin VK3UBY
Peter VK1IRC
Brenton VK2MEV
Tony VK3CAT
Rob VK2FROB
Paul VK5PAS/P3 (S2S)
Rhett VK3GHZ
Peter VK3FPSR/M
Tony VK2BTC
Ron VK3AFW
Mark VK1MDC
Matt VK1MA
Bob VK2PEP
Andrew VK1DA/P (S2S)
Al VK1RX/P2 (S2S)
Glen VK3YY
Marc VK3PI
Owen VK7OR
Mitch VK3FMDV
Fred VK3JM
Peter VK3YE/ Pedestrian Mobile on the beach
Andy VK5LA
Michele VK3FEAT/P
Marshall VK3MRG/P (S2S)
Ian VK1DI/P (S2S)
(most of these worked twice once before and once after UTC change over).
Thanks to all Chasers and activators for making this an enjoyable and successful day.
Earlier than anyone expected, it was announced at 23:30 local time on Saturday 31st. August that the VK2 association of the SOTA awards scheme would be live as of 10:00 local time (UTC 00:00) on Sunday 1st. of September.
There had been a few days warning that this “might” come about however until the official go ahead came through, eager activators could only wait.
Mount Elliot VK2/HU-093
Luckily our local summit – Mt. Elliot had not been removed from the approved list and as you will have seen from my earlier blogs, this is a site that I had already tried out as a chaser on a couple of occasions.
Mt. Elliot does qualify with 150m prominence however calling it a SOTA summit, some would say is a stretch given it’s ease of access but it makes an ideal summit for someone just starting into SOTA activations.
The very top of the Mt. Elliott summit has a fenced off Telstra (telecom) station and a private house on it. The owner of the house is friendly however the interference coming out of the Telstra site makes the whole area not suitable. A few metres vertically down the hill however is Katandra reserve with it’s St John’s lookout over the southern Central Coast of NSW. This park is within the SOTA activation zone and has the advantages of having toilets, electric barbeques and seated areas available. This is a park that the locals use in good weather as we had on this Sunday – Father’s Day.
There are tracks down the escarpment that allows one to walk out of and back into the activation area with your equipment, if you wish to do this (note, as long as you receive NO support from your motor vehicle this is not a requirement but many VK SOTA activators like to do this on “drive-up” summits, so that they have done some climbing as part of the activation).
The activation
I arranged with Rod VK2LAX, that we would do this first activation together, we me bringing my equipment but Rod having his along “just in case” anything went wrong. Surprisingly nothing went wrong. The equipment used, was the tried and tested combination of FT-817ND and SOTABeams linked dipole suspended from a 6m squid pole in inverted-V configuration. This was all set up well in advance at 9am local and we tuned around and called a couple of stations to test the equipment was working.
As VK4 was also to be launched on this day, the plan was to work 40m and 20m, with the longer skip into Queensland on 20m helping with those contacts as it turned out we only had one SOTA contact on 20m and that was with Andy VK5LA in South Australia, 40m provided contacts into VK5, VK3, VK1, VK2 and indeed one contact into VK4. Unfortunately it seems the VK4 activators we’re able to get operational in time for September 1st as no portable VK4 stations were heard.
Below is a short video of the area and indeed that one 20m contact with Andy VK5LA, with Rod VK2LAX on the Mic.
Canoelands Ridge – likely to become VK2/SY-001 SOTA Summit
IMPORTANT NOTE TO PROSPECTIVE ACTIVATORS!
The location described below while OK for chasing, is NOT acceptable as a location to activate from as there is a dip between the actual summit and this piece of land. The actual summit is on private land and has a 33KV electricity tower sat on it – so you will need to find an alternative location within the activation zone. See the flooded to 25m from summit graphic below, as you’ll see there “ought” to be more options back towards Canoelands itself.
Background:
With all regions of the VK2 association now submitted by Andrew VK2UH ( thanks Andrew ) to the SOTA Management Team in the UK for verification and acceptance, I decided it was time to check out another likely (easy) future SOTA summit “close” to where I live. Close is relative when it comes to roads outside of Sydney as while the summit is not so far away from my home as the crow flies, it takes 1.5 hours of hard driving with no traffic jams to get there.
Canoelands Ridge is in the Marramarra National Park.
Before going, I took a good look at the summit and it’s access using Google Earth, Google maps and the NSW governments SIX maps. As it turns out the actual summit is on private ground right where the 33KV electricity feed comes across however the height difference from the road (which runs along the top of the ridge) to the summit is marginal – in fact looking from the road you cannot see any height difference to the actual summit. This means that under the activation zone ” within 25 vertical metres” rule almost anywhere along side the road is acceptable. Here is the next problem however as all of the houses in the area have their nicely maintained gardens going right up to the road side, so a simple pull-off is not possible.
After going back to Google Maps and using “street view” to “walk” along the road, I found a likely spot on a junction from Canoelands Road with a smaller (unnamed) road which occurred before the road started to drop in height (Google Maps references this as No. 61 Canoelands Road for any others who may look for this spot in the future). I decided this is where I would head for and if not suitable continue my search from there. Luckily this spot of waste land with it’s dumped wood and barbed wire was where I expected it and indeed suited the purpose. I drove about a kilometre in all directions from this spot and found nothing better, so I set-up there. This waste land was crossed by 440V power and telephone lines (as you will see in one of the photos below), luckily however these caused no interference and in fact this site appears extremely RF Interference clean.
As this was only a “reccy” and a chance to chase a few VK1 & VK3 activators, I drove to site and didn’t perform a walk out / walk back into the activation area but this will need to be considered when it is used as a SOTA summit as to drop 25m vertically using the access tracks would probably entail walking 10 kilometres or more !
I had headed out early leaving home at 7am to be set-up in-time for the first activators that were scheduled for 9:30am local time. Well they were a little early but so was I due to finding the site without issues. My first contact was with Al, VK1RX/P on VK1/AC-030 with an amazingly strong signal. Following Al I called and worked several other activators (see list below) three of them both before and after UTC change-over. It’s amazing what can be done with QRP and a good site, as I realised later. You see I had caught the power setting on the FT-817 and even though I had an external battery connected, the rig was in fact only putting out ONE WATT for the first 6 contacts and when I realised something was wrong, I changed the setting, to what I thought was 5W but after arriving home, I found that in fact my 7th, 8th and 9th. contacts were still not at “full” power as the FT817 was in fact set to 2.5W output at that stage.
The rest of the equipment used was a 6m squid pole, a SOTABeams linked dipole antenna and of course the SOTA flag – now modified by soldering Alligator clips to it so that it clips easily to the top section of the squid pole.
Canoelands Ridge – Scrub land.
Canoelands Ridge – Scrub land.
Canoelands Ridge – overhead cables
Canoelands Ridge – Antenna
Canoelands Ridge – SOTA Flag flying!
Canoelands Ridge – Equipment “table”.
Canoelands Ridge – view to bush in the direction of the Hawkesbury river.
Canoelands Ridge – lots of trees – possibilities for other antenna set-ups?
Stations worked on 1W:
Al VK1RX/P with Andrew VK1NAM on VK1/AC-030 Mt Yarara (twice, once before and once after UTC change-over).
Allen VK3HRA/P on VK3/VE-230 Mt Glenrowan (twice, once before and once after UTC change-over).
Peter VK3PF/P on VK3/VT-065 (No name mountain) (twice, once before and once after UTC change-over).
VK2JI, LC & LAX on Mount Taylor for 6 months of SOTA in VK1 event.
Although a lot closer to my home location than the previous four activations, Mount Taylor involved a longer drive of over 4 hours from the Central Coast into the ACT (Australian Capital Territory).
This action was part of the celebration of 6 months of SOTA in the VK1 (ACT) association organised by Andrew VK1NAM, who encouraged involvement of all operators interested in SOTA to take part in the event.
Rod VK2LAX traveled down on the Saturday however Jim VK2LC and myself made the journey only on the Sunday morning and with a planned 9:15 am start, this meant rising at the ungodly hour of 3am to be on the road by 4am. The drive down was uneventful apart from fog along the whole on the federal highway, adding about 30 mins to the journey.
The temperature on Mt Taylor dropped once the fog listed but the views (that we saw nothing of, on the climb up) were amazing.
As planned, I set up my equipment on 20m, (FT817 plus inverted V dipole on a 6m squiddy) and Rod and Jim set up for 40m, Rod using an FT897 and a similar SOTABeams linked dipole, but this time set to 40m and Jim with an FT817 and a loaded vertical antenna.
This was Rod’s & Jim’s first summit activation and were rewarded with many contacts on 40m. My decision to run 20m was not as successful with no contacts on that band despite self-spotting, but two on 40m (using the 20m dipole) and, as I had remembered to bring the Wouxon dual-band HT along, thirteen contacts on 2m FM, many of them summit to summit.
So all three of us all well and truly “activated” this peak.
Mt Taylor is a favorite destination for people walking their dogs and running for fitness so we have several visitors asking what on earth we were doing! With a little more preparation this could have been a great opportunity to capture one or two new prospective radio amateurs – maybe at the next one ….
The day rounded out very nicely with most of the activators meeting up at a Canberra cafe for lunch together. A chance not only for the VK2 “interlopers” to meet the VK1 activators but also for some VK1 activators to meet fellow VK1 activators that they had not met previously.
All in all a great day and thanks goes to Andrew VK1NAM for organising it all.
PHOTOS
Radio Operations.
VK2LAX busy working 40m pile-up.
Jim VK2LC taking a breather between contacts.
VK2LC and Vertical antenna in background, my (VK2JI) equipment in foreground.
Video of VK2LC/P1 operating 40m – his first SOTA summit activation.
Location of cafe based on phone location request from April!
Activators lunch participants (1/2)
Activators lunch participants (2/2)
Stations worked:
40m: Paul VK5PAS/P (S2S), Peter VK3PF/P (S2S)
2m: Michael VK1XYZ, James VK1DR/P (S2S) both before and after UTC change-over, Matt VK1MA/P (S2S) both before and after UTC change-over, Andrew VK1DA/P (S2S), Murray VK1UU, Ian VK1DI/P (S2S), Glen VK1FB/P (S2S), John VK1JST/P (S2S), Andrew VK1NAM/P (S2S), Peter VK1IRC/P (S2S), Mark VK1MDC/P (S2S),
Being less than two hours drive from Munich where I was staying, a quick outing into another association seemed like a good idea. It turned out to be a very good idea. The run down & back took little longer than expected due to a lot of roadworks but when we got there, we were rewarded with wonderful sunny weather both in the valley and on the summit. The new (3 or 4 years old) cabin lift in Hopfgarten took only about 15 minutes to takes us from the valley to the summit of the Hohe Salve mountain in two stages.
Once we were on the summit after walking in and out of the activation area, I found a spot behind the church (which sits on the actual summit) and was operational pretty much to the planned time. I made my first ever S2S contact with LA8BCA/P who was on LA/OL100 as my first contact of the day. Once again I had problems being able to self spot either via the Internet or via SMS but Ken G3XQE kindly spotted me and as normal the result was more than enough chasers calling me. I think I managed to work them all but several reported very deep QSB making the contact difficult from their side with my low powered signal – thanks to all the chasers for managing to make the contacts (I had no problem copying any of the calling stations).
I had one technical problem when the FT817 decided to turn itself off because the battery voltage had dropped (I was sure I had recharged it after the Zugspitze activation but it would seem I did not charge it long enough). Thankfully I also had the AA battery pack with me with a set of fully charged AA cells in it, so after a couple of minutes I was able to continue the contact with Anton ON6NL.
Equipment used – same as used for Zugspitze on the previous weekend (with the addition of the SOTA flag).
In Germany the school holidays in various regions are starting and many, many cars head south through Bavaria to Mediterranean countries causing lots of long delays (stau s) on Bavarian roads so we decided on an early start (8am) from Munich and this was a very good decision as we had a clear run to Ehrwald/obermoos from where we took the Tiroler Zugspitzebahn. As the Zugspitze mountain belongs to both Germany & Austria, there cable cars from both countries. This was the first time I had tried the access from Austria. I can highly recommend it. As well as being cheaper than the German options, with the modern Austrian cable car you go from the valley to the summit in just less than 10 minutes in one stage, whereas from the German side it takes longer partially as you have to change cars to get to the summit.
EQUIPMENT USED:
FT817 – 5W
20m only section of SOTABeams bandhopper antenna as inverted v dipole.
6m sqidpole mast (purchased at Friedrichshafen for 30 euros)
I operated from the viewing platform nearest the actual summit (on the German side of the border). Even though it was early there were already a lot of people around so I needed to take my spot quickly. Some of the railings are slanted so these are no good for fastening the ‘sqid pole’ (aka fishing pole) to. Luckily I found some vertical railing and with the help of my wife and her friend (both of whom had never been on the Zugspitze before and totally enjoyed the day) I managed to erect the antenna quickly between gusts of cold wind (temperature on the Zugspitze during my visit was 2 degrees Celsius).
I took a quick look around and found that my planned frequency of 14.285 Mhz appeared free so switched to the smartphone to self spot. After my problems with Internet access the previous week, Andy kindly set me up with SMS spotting capability. I had tested this earlier in the week and it had worked fine, so it ‘should’ work fine here as well, but it didn’t as I had lost phone service when I went into Austria and now the phone needed to be manually set back to a suitable mobile network provider. Of course all of this happened in sunlight where I can hardly see the screen of the phone and when I was in rush to start before my fingers froze (I had gloves of course but operating and writing with gloves on is difficult).
I decided to simply put out a call even though I was a good 30 mins ahead of my planned schedule and thankfully Martin DF3MC came back to my call with a BOOMING strong signal. Martin had helped me with advice about several German SOTA summits, so I had hoped to work him. I had hoped to contact Rudi HB9MKV/OE7WRJ who also helped me in my preparations for the Zugspitze, however that contact was not to be. Thanks to both Martin & Rudi for their very useful advice.
Once Martin ‘spotted me’ on SOTAWatch, as the old saying goes – the rest is history. I had a pile-up of many more stations than I could hope to work, so I apologise here to those who called but I could not get back to, before I had to pack-up because I had lost feeling in my fingers and the area where I was, was becoming busier with more public arriving on each cable car.
Sunday 7th. July 10:10 local (8:10 UTC) and I had set up my FT817 and EFHW antenna just down from the top of the Jenner mountain (1874m asl) near Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. It was a beautiful sunny morning but I only had 30 mins to activate the summit because of other plans. I tuned on the FT-817 on 40m to be hit my a barrage of stations splattering across the usual SOTA frequencies. I put out a couple of calls on 7.090 as it was less conjested than 7.118 (my planned frequency). No answers. I then tried to self spot but got an error in rucksack radio that I could not read in the bright sunlight. I tried again on 7.118 and to my relief Milos S53EO came back to my call, he did not have Internet connectivity and so could not spot me but OE7HPI who I worked next did and further calls followed but by this time the QRM from stations near to the frequency was becoming really bad. I was lucky to manage two more contacts with DL3HXX & HB9AAQ meaning I can claim the summit but by the end of my available time the QRM had got so bad that I would not have been able to work any more stations. I had hoped to operate on 20m as well but simply ran out of time.
What I have learnt from this is that I need to find why spotting from my phone didn’t work and try 20m first next time. The next planned activation has limited space for a 40m wire in any case so is likely to be using just the whip on 20m. The next summit is the Zugspitze at 2962m, the highest place in Germany. Place check SOTAWatch as date may change. As I have to drive there from Munich, the activation will probably be too late for a contact into VK even if the path were open.
Since VK2 (New South Wales in Australia) where I live, isn’t classified yet for SOTA, why not activate a summit in another association – indeed why not in the original SOTA association G?
While visiting relatives I got the chance to activate a simple, 1-pointer, summit G/TW-004 Bishop Wilton Wold (known from my childhood as Garrowby Hill). It was a very simple set-up with the FT-817 and the end fed half wave – laid across the top of a nettle patch by the side of the lay-by. After walking out and back into the activation area I managed to work 9 stations on 40m in less than half an hour and tried 2m as well but without any response on that band.
Well, I now have one activator point – only 999 to go to the mountain goat!
DD5LP / G8GLM / VK2JI blog 
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