Glenn, VK3YY, had posted a message to the VK SOTA Yahoo group indicating he was going to activate SOTA summit Talbot Peak VK3/VT-010 on Sunday and asking if anyone wanted to come along.
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| AAWT heading to Mt Erica |
I had been planning to do an activation somewhere on Sunday but I had not decided where. I rang Glenn on Saturday afternoon and made arrangements to come along.
Meeting in Narre Warren North we headed off a little after 8:00 am arriving at the Mt Erica car park just before 10:00 am. The walk up to Talbot Peak took us just under 2 hours, with a couple of brief stops along the way. There are sections of the track that are a little steeper than others but it was not too tough. Navigation was easy – just follow the signs. Along the way we met some other hikers. Two ladies had hiked to the top of Mt Erica and one guy who was heading through to Mt St Phillack.
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| Talbot Peak trig point |
Once at the Talbot Peak, which hides about 30 metres off the track, I threw a rope up in a tree and started to set up my 3 band linked dipole but Glenn was already on air and working the 40 metres pile up with his end feed half wave.
Once on air I started on 12 metres and, after quite some calling, I was able to work four stations including one in New Zealand.
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| Operating position in the snow |
Once Glenn had worked through the pile up we swapped bands and he worked 12 metres while I worked a small group on 40 metres then 20 metres for one QSO and then back for some more action on 40 metres.
By the end of about an hour and a half I had made 18 QSOs including five summit to summit contacts.
The weather was fine with occasional sun and the temperature at the summit was between 2 and 3 degrees.
I had not hiked in snow before today and it was a good day out from start to finish.
Thanks Glenn for the trip up and back.
Glenn’s blog post about this activation can be found here.
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| Mt Erica 1509 m ASL |