I had the good fortune of company on the first long hike for SOTA season 2017.

Ian VK5IS decided it was about time to do his first activation, we met at Laura early in the morning to make the rest of the trip in 1 vehicle. The Battery is about a 4.5 km hike with a short uphill to the top of the ridge from Stony Creek head water. After a nice egg and bacon toasty sanger and coffee we set off in good time to make the summit before UTC roll over. We were strolling along in good spirits swapping chatter and it suddenly occurred to me I did not have my Go Pro camera with me although I remembered I had taken it out of the Ute.  We were about 1.5 km into the hike and after thinking about the said cameras whereabouts I remembered putting it on the running board at the back of my Ute while I locked the canopy. So the decision for me to unload my back pack and get back to the Ute asap before maybe a passing opportunistic thief may see it and score a $500 Go Pro added to the urgency. Ian made himself comfortable in the shade and I made the round trip back to find the camera where I had left it and we were able to get on with the hike to the summit.

Once the Summit was reached and gear set up We made contact on 80 m first with some of the local chasers even enough to qualify the summit . I used the 80 m extensions clipped onto the usual SB link 40/20 m dipole and had good comms on 80 m locally .

Ian checking the path to VK5NWE on 2 m simplex before trying 40 m.

The 40 m band did not disappoint this time conditions were good to the Eastern states and Tassie and once Col VK3LED got a spot up for us Ian was in a pile up for his first activation.

In the action .

Ian’s many years of operating and his relaxed style made it a nice experience for the chasers and I am sure he enjoyed doing his first activation and I hope he does some more in the future.  The weather was warming up and the shade had gone from our spot on the ground so I made 5 quick cw qso on 40m cw and made a couple calls on 20m to no answer so we packed up and headed back to the Ute. For some reason on that summit the mobile phone won’t connect to the internet even though it seems to have plenty of signal, so we could not spot for 20 m . I just called on the usual frequency anyhow.

Cheers and thanks for reading my Blog

Ian vk5cz ..