Well, it is almost Christmas here and I have been very busy and not able to blog. We were also without Internet for a few days which didn’t help.
I have added another National Park to my list having worked from the Kinglake National Park about a week ago.
The Kinglake area, including the National Park, was devastated by the Black Saturday fires back on February 7th 2009. About the only part of the National Park not damaged was the Frank Thomson Reserve. It was from here that I worked 20m using a 1/2 wave inverted Vee strung in the trees.
The local Yarra Valley Amateur Radio Group will be setting up a field station VI3KIAH at the reserve on February 7, 2010 to commemorate the worst fires and loss of life in this state’s history.
I have almost finalised my plans for hiking into the French Island National Park on 9 and 10 January 2010 along with 3 other members of the SRESU. We will be on air using VK3SAT and working HF bands 20m and below.
In preparation for running QRP I have been using my FT7 from home on a sealed lead acid battery, just like I will on the island. So far I have QSO on 20m with VK4, VK2, VK6 and the Norwegian special event station LM9K75Y where I was the 20,000th QSO. Not a bad effort for 10 watts into an inverted Vee.
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