Last Monday I had a few hours spare in the evening so I took my new FT817ND, squid pole and multi-band inverted vee antenna and went and activated the Organ Pipes National Park. This park is just north of the edge of the suburbs, opposite the famous Calder Park Thunder Dome and race track.
My aim was to complete the 5 main HF bands for this park. I already had 20m from an earlier visit in January 2010. After setting the antenna and opening my radio box it looked like I wasn’t going to make any QSO as I had not brought the DC power lead for the radio. I was about to pack up when I remembered the FT817 has its own internal battery, which I had charged the day before.
I only had a short time available and was successful with QSOs on 40, 80 and 15m. Despite trying for 10 minutes solid I couldn’t get a QSO on 10m. Two of these QSOs were with Allen VK3HRA who is a very keen Keith Roget Memorial National Park Award chaser. Thanks Al.
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