The Canberra Region Amateur Radio Club received authorisation to use the callsign Vi100ACT during the month of March 2013, to recognise the Canberra Centenary.  I volunteered to coordinate the roster of members who were keen to use the callsign during the month and rostered myself on for the 40m, 20m and 2m bands on the evening of 1 March when I would be activating Mt Ainslie as a SOTA station.

For this activation I set up the 20m dipole as well as the 40m dipole.  I made about 15 contacts on 40m including VK1/2/3/4/5/7, ZL2 and FK8.  A few contacts were made on 2m FM, then I moved to 20m and self spotted on sotawatch.org to announce that I was calling on 14.061 CW.  I then worked 8 contacts into England, Germany, Austria and France (G, DL, OE and F) with reports varying from 339 (weak) to 559 (fair).  This seemed a fair result for the first use of the 20m dipole, not yet optimised for length or angle.  The power output of the FT817 is 5 watts.

The two dipoles shared a common feedpoint at the top of the squid pole support, and the dipoles were strung out in roughly the same plane, the longer one at the top and the shorter one below it.  No impact on the 40m antenna behaviour was apparent.  The SWR on 20m was not ideal as there was some reflected power indicated on the 817 meter.

The Vi100ACT callsign is to be used on various bands by different club members during the month of March 2013.  The official centenary of Canberra’s founding/naming ceremony is on the 12th of March.