Monthly Archives: May 2021

Lagoon Hill S2S DX to USA.

Lagoon Hill is a nice Summit located in The Julia Ranges about 50 km from my home town of Clare, its one of those summits I save locally for a quick visit on a Sunday.

Hugh was off bush walking so it was time to get some ankle burn on Lagoon Hill and it does not disappoint once the accent starts. Farmer Jeff has the neighboring property and he lets me walk across his paddock to get to the boundary of Lagoon Hill property. Another difference with this summit is it’s a Heritage Trust private conservation area, but I have permission from the Trust Director to access the Trig point via a Crown Land easement that ends in a 1 acre area around the trig point ideal amount of room to set up my SOTA station.

Now to access I need to follow the easement along a fence line at the bottom of the hill for a while then once I come to two large stones in the fence line, these are the original survey markers placed there many years ago. With my cap on backwards I head east up to the top of the summit in about 400 metres of distance with roughly 160 metres of gain in the land to the top. Its a killer for sure but with plenty of rests you eventually make the top, this time it took 43 minute to go about 2 km from the parked Ute.

Lots of Yacka Bushes Rocks and Sheoaks on the way up.
Trig point

Now once on the summit and recovered a bit I set up my 20/40/80 link dipole on a 7 metre telescopic pole getting ready to start the activation and on my Alert time too for a change.

The first contacts are on 80m SSB with some local chasers from around country SA. I then changed to 40m CW and worked into VK 2 3 4 5 with good signals and also got a good report from ZL1BQD in New Zealand.

While on 40m I went to SSB and worked more VK stations in VK 2 3 then Hugh called me on 2m FM while he was on his bush walk some 30 km away from me.

SOTA Flag Flying

The dipole runs out nicely along the ridge line and all bands can fit in between the Sheoak trees.

The old log serves as a good support for my pole and of course I have a cushion to sit on and operate the radio.

My SOTA Shack KX3 radio at 10w of power out, I use a paper note book and pencil to log the calls.

Once I had run out of Chasers on 40m I took down the bigger Dipole and put up a 20/17/15 metre 3 band link Dipole I made so I could try some higher bands.

On 20m CW I worked VK2IO and YC1RIK in Indonesia but no response to a quick CQ on 20m SSB.

Time to change bands and try 17m on CW, I heard a couple beacons quite well on 18.110 so I though conditions should be ok. After the first CQ JH1MXV and ZL1BYZ answered me straight away so the Spotting was working on the net ok. It was getting windy on the hill and I put in my ear buds so I could hear the radio better and I noticed when I called CQ on CW I could hear the tail end of my CW characters in my ear buds like an echo sound. It shows the great Receiver and Full Break In on the KX3 works well. It was a bit off putting to start but I have had this experience before and I thought if there was this sound my signal was being propagated some where out there. Listing for a while I heard a faint signal sending S2S S2S meaning Summit 2 Summit. I had checked my phone before and thought I did not see any other VK ops out on SOTA today, then NN7M put in his callsign. WoW USA S2S its only happened to me once before in 9 years of SOTA. I slowed my CW speed a little to help with the QSB on the path but we managed to make a RST swap plus Summit Reference swap quite easily in the end. NN7M was on W7W/SK-173 and the copy was so good I even heard him correct a mistake he sent in the Reference. It is so cool to make these Summit 2 Summit contacts on low power, Ryan sent a comment in his signoff Spot on the SW3 page he was running 5 watts and I had the KX3 at10w for the activation. Having the proper resonate link Dipole is also a big help rather than some compromised tuned up antenna that might work ok in some circumstances but not as efficient or consistent when making DX contacts further than one would expect.

Great View out to the East from here.

One last try on 15m CW I worked YC1RIK again with a slightly better reception than our QSO on 20m earlier but good of him to chase me on other bands.

This is a view from Tothill Range Summit looking back to Lagoon Hill this Summit gave me my first S2S with USA NJ7V 23/04/2017, its been a while.

Great view all around this area and the Farmers could sure use some rain so they can make a start on cropping for season 21/22.

View out to the North Tothill Range Summit and many others out there.

Thanks to all the chasers for 20 QSO’s in a 3 hour period of living the dream on SOTA.

Thanks to the land owners

Thanks for reading my Blog.

See you on the next one ..




3 Summits in One Day and 2 Long Hikes.

Middle of May already and Hugh and I have several summits in the log for this year. The cooler Summer and Autumn gave some opportunities to get out on Summits much sooner this year. April 17th was good for getting a 3 summit day trip done so we chose Hogshead, Coomaroo and Maurice Hill as a big day out on Summits.

Hogshead VK5/NE-051 is near Pekina and a rather steep climb up in a very short distance of about 900m from the parking spot.

Great view out to the South from Hogshead Summit

On this Summit is a great example of a Stone Cairn that are on many of the summits we visit.

Hugh worked on 2 metres this time with his home made Flower Pot antenna with good results having good coverage to several local chasers on 2m FM.

I had several contacts on 80m SSB with the local group of chasers then made contact with some interstate chasers on 40m CW to give me 9 QSO in total.

Hazy day being so dry up here but nice weather for us on the hill.

This one in the log Hugh and I headed off to the next summit via some dirt roads near Mt Robert and hitting the bitumen road near Morchard before turning off to the Coomaroo Summit. It was Hugh’s first visit to this summit so he now has a new one to his list and it’s about a 2km to hike up from the parking spot.

Once again Hugh was able to work several 2m FM contacts from here but had to resort to 40m to find a couple extra contacts to make a score of more than 4 QSO.

VK5CZ working chasers on Commaroo Hill VK5/NE-088

It was hard to find chasers on Coomaroo as it was around lunch time by the time we got there and the bands were a bit quiet but we managed to find a mixture this time of VK and ZL stations I could work on cw. Hugh had a couple chasers on 2m FM and lucky to find a couple more on 80m SSB. We did not stay long as it was another 40 km back to the next summit along some more back roads. This activity lets you find a way on roads that would never be travelled by me other wise.

Next Stop Maurice Hill VK5/NE-049

Maurice Hill is a drive up summit so a good reason to leave it until last for the day when the old legs might be a bit sore from the mornings hikes.

Operating on Maurice Hill behind this rock shelf out of the wind.


This was a bit of an unusual activation for us as Hugh found enough contacts on 2m FM but we could not get much sense out of 80m SSB with the locals this time. I did however work VK5PAS VK5MAZ mobile in VK3, VK3PF at home and VK7QP in Tasmania on 80m during the day. It seemed the further away the caller was the better the signal.

A good amount of 40m SSB and CW chasers from VK 2 3 5 6 and some ZLs as well. My contact with VK3YE appeared on one of his portable operating You Tubes I noticed the other day on 40m CW.

Back to Clare and fill in the logs after a big day out on summits with Hugh.

With a few rest days but not wanting to lose any fitness Hugh and I headed for Mount Brown VK5/NE-014.

It was a mid week activation this time and really nice weather as it can get pretty windy on Mount Brown as it is over 900 m ASL. We left the SOTA transporter at 9 am thinking it would be about 2 hours to the top but we were suffering a bit on this hike and it ended up being 2 and a half hours to make it. We had the pressure on to make our Spot time on SW3 but lucky for us there were plenty of chasers waiting.

I set up HF on the side of the walking track and Hugh climbed onto the viewing platform and set up his Flower Pot antenna again for VHF 2m FM.

Being so high above sea level Hugh had very good coverage on 2m working as far south as Moonta Bay on FM voice with the signal path being over water in Spencer Gulf for most of the time.

Hugh made a good score on 2m FM then also worked some chasers of 40m SSB to top up his score.

Platform on top of Mt Brown.
The Flower Pot Antenna

Great take off point on VHF from on the Platform we both had plenty of contacts while on Mt Brown.

The hard walk up was worth it as we were both pretty sore and tired by the time we got back to my Ute with 12.5 km in the legs and feet.

Devils Peak and Dutchman’s Stern across the Valley.

Amazing views from the platform above the trees on Mt brown.

Next Summit in view Mt Remarkable off to the South.

Next big hike is Mt Remarkable, Hugh and I and a local non ham friend Garry started from Melrose early to make the 2 hour hike to the summit which is 6.2km on the North track.

Screed Slopes site of a plane crash.
Having a rest near plane crash site at 5 km mark on the trail.
Farmers Dry Seeding on Willowie Plains.

Once we arrived at the summit and got set up the weather was really nice and warm with hardly any wind on the summit. Hugh set up his Flower Pot again and made some VHF 2m FM contacts. I set up the HF and made lots of contacts on 80m SSB with local VK5 chasers and the Special Event call sign VK100AF for 100 years of the Air Force.

Garry Chilled out on the bench while Hugh and I did the SOTA thing then we headed off back down the Mountain on the new South track as a different way down.

Link Dipole set up on a bench quite handy as a resting bench too.

All I can say about the South track is it meanders for a lot longer and is steeper and a very rough surface making it a harder way to get off the Mountain and it’s at least 1 km further if not more.

Great day for a hike and nice to get some long hikes done for this year I only have Dutchman’s Stern Summit to do some time later.

Thanks to the land owners for access and thanks for reading my Blog.

regards

Ian vk5cz ..