Out of Bed 4.30 am on Friday 11th to get organised to meet Hugh at his house to reload Mitsi for our journey to Pualco Range vk5/ne-107. This time after much investigative work from Hugh he found an easier way to get there, last year we just kept travelling east across the salt bush plain when the track run out. We entered into sheep station country east of Mount Bryan and followed some good dirt roads for about 50 km before out first fence line track to the entrance to the summit paddock which is about 40 square miles. The track  inside the paddock was in good order and some creek crossings had been fixed and we made the northern side of the summit in about 3 hours from Hugh’s house.

 That’s the summit in the back ground we are on a ridge line here gaining altitude before the main assault there are big Yacca’s growing here and lots of spinifex grass and a few Mallee trees.

We huffed and puffed for another kilometre along this ridge then it got steep and lots of rock ledges to pick a way through, Hugh is the lead goat on these climbs and is good at reading the terrain to find a way.

   Hugh is on a mission.

   I need a spell and to run some guts off, fancy taking the photo as I exhaled.

Great view out to the west from here, we are just over half way to the top.

  The stone Cairn has collapsed on the trig but we made it.

 Hard at it working my faithful following on cw I managed to get 4 on cw and 4 on ssb so qualified on each mode then handed over to Hugh while everyone was still interested.

 Hugh making a score, it was windy so ear buds were needed, the wx was  a very pleasant day not too hot.

 View out East, we need to investigate if that hill is not a summit also.

 View to the South.

 View east along the range from the top .

 The antenna Sota beams 20/40 link dipole 8m hi and KX3 at 10 watts.

 A Brachyscome bush in full bloom , pretty harsh environment to survive in but I must say the country looked nice and as lush as it can . Lots of Kangaroos with young Joeys so they must know the season is good, saw a few ferrel goat but not many .

 I recon these are the biggest Yaccas I have ever seen they must be hundreds of years old and still look nice and healthy.

Well not much else to say about this one but I was relieved to find 40m in fairly good shape as we have had bad conditions for my last two activations barely qualifying at times. 20m to vk4 was really good on cw . Thanks to all the chasers and sorry to those in the short skip zone we could not work.

Thanks Hugh for all the ground work finding permission from land owners and a way to get there easier than last time well done. We travelled some good made roads, fence lines and station tracks with lots of gates to open and close it was a way to keep my body loosened up jumping in and out of Mitsi.

Lets head off the our next activation Kanaka Hill in the afternoon.

cheers from Ian vk5cz and Hugh vk5nhg ..