VK3UA's Blog About Amateur (Ham) Radio Activities

Hi. Welcome to VK3UA's Blog about Ham Radio. This site is mainly for me to record and remember my ham radio and electronics activities. I hope that you find something interesting and/or useful to you here. 73 de Cambo.

Sunday 19 May 2013

SOTA: VK3/VC-004 Mt Observation Activation Attempt

SOTA
VK3/VC-004 Mt Observation
18th May, 2013

I decided to try to activate Mt Observation, near Marysville. The summit is actually exactly on the border of the Yarra Ranges National Park and the Yarra State forest, so I figured I could also activate the NP at the same time.

As it hadn't been activated yet, I figured it must be difficult to get to, as there has been a quite high level of summit activation activity in VK3 in 2013.

I was right.

Monday 13 May 2013

Trans Tasman Contest 80 Metre Phone 2013

I had a great evening on the radio operating QRP (5 watts) in the Trans Tasman 80 Metre Phone Contest on the 11th May. It ran for six hours, with the 5 best one hour blocks being used for the final score.
VK Contest Log was used for logging and did an excellent job.

Monday 22 April 2013

SOTA: Mt Hickey VK3/VN-015

Mt Hickey
VK3/VN-015
21st April, 2013

Mt Hickey is an easy drive from Melbourne.

It is situated just south east of Seymour. You turn right off the Hume Highway at Ennis Road and just follow the road up until you get to Phone Track. Turn right and follow it up to the summit.
It goes to dirt fairly quickly, but it is well maintained and any vehicle should be able to get to the summit in the dry. When wet, I would advise caution in a normal car, though you probably should still be able to make it.

There is a couple of commercial installations at the top, and room to park the car just down the road. I walked over to the west side where there are some nice trees to throw an antenna into.

It was late and cold when I got there. I set up my ft-817 and wire dipole for 40 metres and called CQ for a while with no success. Finally I got a contact with weak signal levels, and the conversation attracted a couple of others who could only just hear me. In the end I only got the required 4 contacts before dark was falling and it was starting to drizzle.

I called it a day, packed up, and drove down to the highway in the dark.

Not the best activation as I also forgot to take some photo's, but at least I got the points on the board.

73

Cambo