Three summits around Central Vic Radiofest

Hi all,

Ron, VK3AFW organised a table for Summits on the Air to use at the Amateur Radio Victoria Central Victorian Radiofest, Sunday 10th of February. This was a chance to spread the word about SOTA. I also gave a shortish presentation of 20 minutes about SOTA. Given the trip up to Kyneton, there was a chance to have a look at a few activations on the way.

Mt Macedon VK3/VC-007

I decided that all my activations today would be 2m only. I took the colinear, and had done some work to improve the match, as discussed in Constructing a 2m colinear Part 2. Unfortunately, RG58 is a bit of a pain to work with, because if a little too much dialetric is stripped back, the centre conductor can push back and cause a short in the connector. This happened to me where I put a connector in for my stub. I had to move the stub a little further back, so now I was only going to try to match for 144.1, and leave 146.5 at about 2.5 SWR – make another stub for that later. The stub was tested at a SWR at about 1.6 SWR. This is close enough for me, given I was not actually trying for a 1:1 match, and the point of the stub was not exactly controlled!

I operated from the very impressive cairn that marks the summit. It was a bit foggy as can be seen in the picture.

Mt Macedon summit

The tower seen in the background overloaded the front end of the Wouxun, so I had to use the FT-817 for everything, including FM. The 817 was struggling a little on 144.1 SSB with interference. Still it was a good session with a varied number of contacts from different places, but none quite like Glenn VK3YY picking up a near 600km contact from Renmark from here on the previous day.

Here’s a look at the operating location. Glad I brought the foam for a nice dry place to sit.

Operating location at Mt Macedon

With that, it was time to go to the radiofest for a few hours and then the next activation of the day.

Mt Cobaw VK3/VC-015

Accessing this summit was a little interesting. I first headed up Prendergasts Rd, which was shown on a Vicroads directory as a through road. It is not. Perc Boyers Lane goes off it, but is a rough 4wd track only. I headed back and tried then using Reillys Rd from Burke And Wills Track. Reillys Rd is a good quality 2wd gravel road. Burke and Wills is sealed. Camp Track is marked on Forest Explorer, but actually appears to follow a 4wd track at 918777. This has some huge ruts, so it was only 50m in on the 2wd before parking and continuing on foot. It was easy to find Soil Pit Track and I headed along this to about 907776 and then headed due west off track for about 200m to access the summit. There appears to be a track coming in from the north from Camp Track to the summit as well.

Here’s a pic of the final approach to the summit. Easy off track walking.

Approaching the summit from the east

Again, I operated only on 2m. Action here was all FM, with quite a few s2s to be had. There were a few trying out SOTA after the Radiofest. Without any commercial sites here, no problems using the Wouxun on FM.

Pretty Sally VK3/VC-034

The final summit for the day was Pretty Sally, which is only a short distance north of Wallan. The summit area itself appears closed to the general public, but Old Sydney Road enters the activation zone. I operated from a spot near the Beauview Dr junction, northwest of the summit. This had the effect of putting me on the wrong side of the hill for a lot of Melbourne, but it turned out I still was able to work people from the eastern suburbs through the hill.

Again, a 2m activation, most on FM, but one on 144.1 SSB. Here’s a few picks of the operating location and the colinear in action. The colinear works well, but it means there is more unwanted signal also coming in to overload weak radio frontends. Here, the Wouxun could not be used, but the FT-817 was ok.

Operating at Pretty Sally

Colinear on a squid pole

With that it was time to head home. Three new summits to add to the collection. On the way home, I noticed that a small fire had started on the William range area, near where Rik VK3KAN had been earlier in the day. It looked like it was just a few hectares at that stage. We need some decent rain soon!

Regards, Wayne Merry VK3WAM