Yesterday I made it back into the hills for a SOTA activation, my first one in seven weeks, at Mt Saint Phillack, VK3/VT-006 in the Baw Baw National Park.
 |
| Mt St Gwinear summit |
Glenn, VK3YY, and I left home just after 7:00 am and headed east toward Moe. Turning left off the freeway we headed north along the Moe – Walhalla Rd simply following the signs to the St Gwinear car park.
We arrived at the car park at 9:00 am and headed off to the summit at 9:15 am. The weather was lightly overcast and about 9 degrees.
We headed up along the Main Trail for 2 km then veered left taking the Gwinear Track up to Mt St Gwinear arriving at 10:00 am.
 |
| Rock shelter |
After a few quick photos we headed down the west side of Mt St Gwinear to Gwinear Flat then kept heading south-west a further 400 metres to ‘Rock Shelter’ at the junction of the Australian Alpine Walking Track. Turning right on to the AAWT and heading up then along to the summit of Mt Saint Phillack arriving just after 10:30 am.
 |
| Mt St Phillack summit |
Glenn set his end fed half wave up with his squid pole jammed in the rock cairn while I threw a rope in the trees and hoisted my linked dipole up about 5 metres.
Glen started on 40 metres, working the usual flood of chasers, calling me over to work any summit to summit contacts as they came. I was keen to activate the National Park on some different HF bands for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award and made contacts on 10, 12, 15, 40 and 80 metres. I called for 15 minutes on 20 m but with no reply. The highlight for the day was working Mike, AD5A, in Texas on 12 m. Mike is a very keen SOTA chaser and was a pleasure to work. Glenn also worked Mike on his end fed antenna. I made 13 QSOs on the 5 bands and Glenn made 33 QSOs, mostly on 40 metres.
 |
| Operating position |
After about 90 minutes on the summit, and S2S contacts with VK3HRA, VK3PF, VK1DI/2, VK3MRG and VK1DA, Glenn and I packed away our gear and headed back to the car.
On the way down we took Cascade Trail to the north side of the Mt St Gwinear summit a before rejoining the Main Trail. We got back to the car park at 2:20 pm and headed home arriving home at 4:30 pm.
Mike, AD5A has posted on his blog about our QSO.
Glenn, VK3YY, has posted his report of the trip on his blog here.
 |
| Linked dipole in trees |
 |
| View from below Mt St Gwinear |
 |
||||||
| Trail map |
73