Club members taking SHF out bush!
Club member Andrew VK1AD continues his bush explorations in search of SOTA Summit activations on the higher bands into the SHF world.
The following is reproduced with his permissions. NB Andrew runs 2 blogs (even one is a struggle for yours truly!) So above is linked his main blog, but for specific SHF SOTA / Portable he maintains this page: https://vk1sotaon23cm.wordpress.com/
Sunday 24 May 2020. Andrew VK1DA and I have chosen two summits for the day, first Mount Wee Jasper VK2/ST-017 1121m ASL grid square QF44HU followed by Snow Gum Mountain VK2/SW-028 1179m ASL, grid square QF44IR.
Snow Gum Mountain
Snow Gum Mountain is 11.5 km line of sight from Wee Jasper, however the route between summits is convoluted through pine forests. Travel time is approximately 45 minutes.
Until recent times Snow Gum Mountain hosted a VHF VOR/DME air navigation facility. The VHF DME was decommissioned, all communications infrastructure have been removed from the site. The site is now a drive-up summit, there are no signs, gates, barriers, buildings or fences. The mountain peak has been returned to nature 🙂
The view of the horizon is an uninterrupted 360!
Extract of VK1AD SOTA Activator Log: Snow Gum Mountain VK2/SW-028 Sunday 24 May 2020
| TIME | CALLSIGN | BAND | MODE | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 02:19 | VK1MA | 144MHz | SSB | QF44MT Matt s58 r55 |
| 02:23 | VK1RX | 144MHz | SSB | QF44NN Al s59 r59 |
| 02:30 | VK1MA | 1240MHz | SSB | QF44MT Matt s54 r51 37 km |
| 02:33 | VK1RX | 1240MHz | SSB | QF44NN Al s59 r59 49 km |
| 02:39 | VK8GMT/1 | 1240MHz | SSB | QF44MT Matt s55 r51 37 km |
| 02:40 | VK2UK/1 | 1240MHz | SSB | QF44MT Matt s55 r51 37 km |
| 03:17 | VK1MIC | 144MHz | SSB | QF44NT Wade s55 r51 |