Mt Rouse, in Western Victoria, is an extinct volcano that is now 367 metres above sea level at the summit. When it was active, its lava flows extended 60km's to the sea at the current coastal township of Port Fairy.
 | Mt Rouse coming from the South along Penshurst Road. |
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Entrance to Mt Rouse. |
As it is relatively low in height, it only rates 1 point for SOTA activation, however it has fantastic views, and is an easy activation. The car park is only about 100 metres down from the summit, with the final ascent up a flight of steps.
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| Gear ready to go at car park. |
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| K9Mobile resting before attempting steps. It was HOT. |
Before ascending to the top, there is a Marker located at the bottom of the steps to commemorate Napier Waller, a noted Australian muralist, mosaicist and painter, that was born in Penshurst, at the foot of Mt Rouse.
There are commercial towers next to the summit, which proved handy to tie a leg of my dipole to. The other leg was tied to the Trig point. The Trig point marker indicates the exact summit, but their use is now discontinued with more modern electronic methods for managing these things.I used a J-Pole (made by Peter, VK3PAH) for 2 metres and a wire dipole for 10 metres, both mounted on what was left of my 5 metre Squid pole after K9MOBILE ( aka my dog, Kuro) got tangled in a guy and broke the central piece in half.
It was a hot sunny day so I erected a shelter to set up my station and operate under.
I made 6 contacts on 146.500 FM and 3 contacts on 28.380 SSB. I didn't notice any interference form the commercial installations and had good copy with all those contacted even though signal strengths were not strong.
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| Station set up. HTX-100 for TEN and Yaesu HT for TWO |
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| K9Mobile taking a break from exploring in the heat. |
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| Operating under cover. |
My activation site caused quite a bit of interest with the sight-seeing tourists, with lots of questions asked. One even knowingly nodded, and said "Ahh, you're a Ham Radio operator." :)
73
Cambo