How lucky am I ? I am now so close to Mountain Goat I can smell me.

2 points to Mountain Goat.

I have done a few more summits in the last couple of weeks bringing total to 19 for this year so far. We have had some good rain and this poor old land is looking much better now and it is not so distressing to venture out on the summits and see the wildlife dead and half starved. Properties destocked and dust and rocks is all you could see, but I noticed some green grass pushing through and the bush looking much better.

I featured my new bag in my last Blog and I must say now that my left shoulder is healing from my operation it is very good to wear over my left shoulder and it sits nicely in place for hiking. I had a few issues when I wore it over my right shoulder it would slowly work it’s way around in front of my hip making it uncomfortable, but at the time it was the only way I could carry it and continue hiking to my mission.

The first big hike with the new bag was Mount Brown  with Ian vk5is who came on the 13 km round trip with me to gain 8 points.

   

Great View of Dutchman’s Stern and Devils Peak, Ian hard at work and a threat of rain.

We found the hike quite hard this year, we are both another year older but we still made 16 minute kilometres on the hike so not too bad. There were not many chasers on Mount Brown this time and we had a rain storm threatening over head so we went tag team on the mike on 40m ssb to hurry it along. A few happy snaps then get underway back down off the mountain but the rain did not really eventuate, just a few spots.

 

Raining in the South and Dust storm in the North.

Next two summits were with Hugh vk5nhg who is getting into his new season 2019 with a trip to Mt Cone first on the way to Mount Bryan. We headed out from home to arrive at the bottom of Mt Cone to find it covered in low cloud and mist. It was quite cold and a little windy so we set up behind the comms hut at the top. The radio for this summit was my kit and the FT 817 which suffered badly from interference from the other services up there but we managed quite a good score as the chasers gave us really good report on 5 watts. Hugh went first before utc roll over then I went second after roll over, doing it this way makes it more interesting for the chasers as they can score both activations as a separate day.

 Hugh had a good pile up of chasers on 80/40m ssb and I had a mix of 80m ssb and 40m cw, amazing how that FT 817 gets out at times just using a low dipole.

We drove off Mt Cone in bright sunshine to head to Mt Bryan to arrive at the gate and found it locked and the secret key missing from the hide e hole. This meant we had to back track around to the Eastern side of the Mount and hike up. Arriving at the hike entrance we had a coffee break looking up at the Mountain completely covered in cloud and mist, Hugh put on his rain coat and off we went. Its a 3km hike from the carpark at 600m asl to 936m asl at the top and I recon the last kilometre has the most gain so it really hurts for me to walk up. With lots of short bursts and spells we made it in good time really, about 1 hours. It was very windy right on top and of course Hugh’s rain coat did the trick it fined up.

 

We both had some good contacts on 40m Hugh working all the ssb chasers and I cleaned up on ssb and cw chasers with a ssb s2s with vk1mcw. We had trouble on 80m getting over the high noise levels into vk5wg but managed to do a swap eventually. It turned out there was a loose connection at one of the links in the dipole and all that really helped us get out at all was the antenna tuner in Hugh’s mighty KX2.

 

Usual great views from Mt Bryan but not a very nice place to visit on a windy day.

 

Great sunrise on my hike to The Bluff vk5/ne-065

Which was a 3 km hike up the road this time. I met with the Park Ranger and he said it is ok to hike up the road these days making it much easier and a shorter overall hike by about 4 km.

 

Rig of choice this activation is the fT817 as it fits in my new bag easier than the KX3. The bush is recovering nicely from the bushfire that decimated this area a few years ago. I have to set up here on the road side as the new young bush is just too thick to penetrate let alone hang up an antenna. This spot is about 20m below the summit. Very good band conditions today I was able to make a S2S with Mot JP1QEC/0 on 17m band. My antenna for 17m is my link dipole as the accidental ocf, having one of the 20m links open and the long end being set up for 80m it is close to a 37 metre long ocf dipole fed 9 metres in from the short end. Once Mot was in the log I set up and worked Nev on 80m and he was my only contact on that band. Making 14 qso’s on 40m ssb and cw and the S2S before utc roll over I was able to reset and work most of the chasers again and some new ones after role over. A good mix of ssb and cw on 40m then changed to 20m and worked 3 zl stations on cw but got no answer on 20m ssb even though i did spot my intentions. Today zl1bwg worked me with his new FT818 which is my first qso with this model rig that I know of, a great two way qrp qso.

 

I managed to climb to the top of the summit through the thick bush and get some photos of the Western side of the range. Looking down you can see Port Pirie and Point Lowly on the other side of Spencer Gulf.

That’s me all caught up for now, and I am very excited about my next activation which will be a 2 pointer from Mt Horrocks which was my first summit when SOTA first started in vk5 in October 2012. I need to get in touch with my faithful chasers and get a good party type activation going with as many other SOTA ops as possible.

I do intend to keep SOTA going and will be heading out again soon to keep Ian or Hugh going on activating and add to my own log also.

Thanks to the chasers and land owners.

Thanks for reading my Blog.

Regards Ian vk5cz ..