Monthly Archives: April 2021

Amateur Radio, field and portable, SOTA

Webb’s Ridge VK2/ST-005 and Mt Coree VK1/AC-023 22nd Feb 2021

This was a joint activation with Andrew VK1AD. The first summit visited was Mt Coree and we completed our activation before 0000 UTC, so my log is dated 21/2/2021. I made several vhf/uhf contacts followed by 4 CW contacts and 2 on SSB.

A highlight of this operation was that while listening on 2403.150 after making some local contacts, Andrew heard a weak CW signal that was hard to identify and called me over to see what I could get from it. There was some variation in the signal strength but the direction was constant. It turned out to be a beacon signal on 2403 MHz from a station in the Wollongong area, about 230km away. Quite a good distance on this band, and I think it was the furthest distant signal I had heard on this band. I recorded a video clip but I can’t publish that on this site. The callsign was VK2BLS and the signal was on 2403.150, the ssb calling frequency. The equipment used by VK1AD was a SG-LAB transverter to a FT817 transceiver. The antenna was a 4 element PCB yagi on a camera tripod. For more info and photos please see Andrew’s blog at this link.

https://vk1sotaon23cm.wordpress.com/tag/summits-on-the-air/

fairly rough trip up to Coree and the parking is limited
Some forest views while en route between Coree and Webb’s Ridge

We then went to Webb’s Ridge which can be seen in the main photo of this post. The photo was taken from Mt Coree.

While Andrew set up and operated on VHF bands, I made one ssb S2S contact with VK2TER/p and then 6 CW contacts with the regular chasers. We exited the site fairly quickly when a rain storm threatened.

Some pics taken while at Webb’s Ridge

On the way back to Canberra the rain storm had moved from the west of the range to the Canberra valley and created some unique formations in the sky to the east of the mountains. I took some photos of the clouds with rain falling from them. Later I submitted one of them to ABC Canberra TV for consideration and was pleasantly surprised to find they showed it as a background while giving the weather forecast on the nightly news, several days later, crediting me with the photo. The camera used was a Canon M5.

An added twist to a good day of SOTA.