I made another attempt to claim a National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.
I had an hour or two to spare so I travelled to the Dandenong Ranges National Park and tuned in a 20m dipole. Actually, ‘tuned it’ is perhaps not really true. I cut two pieces of wire 5.5 m long and attached them to a 1:1 balun and raised it in the air as an inverted Vee. The SWR was better than 1.4:1 so I left it as was. No trimming required 🙂
I called CQ on a number of 20m frequencies but got no response. Listening around the 20m band was also very quiet.
I guess at this time of day (5:00 pm local – 0600 GMT) the band is not open anywhere. Or nobody was listening.
As I was packing up the band seemed to get a little life to it, but as they lock the gates at 6:00 pm local I had to go.
I will have to have another go later in the day from a section of the park that doesn’t close early.
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