Last Saturday night was the annual QRP hours contest. This contest allows scoring only for contacts made using a transmitter of 5 Watts on the 80 m band.
For this contest I also chose to activate SOTA summit VK3/VC-031 at the same time.
I drove to the car park at the summit, packed all my gear into a small backpack and headed off down the hill, out of the activation zone. Once out of the activation zone I turned around and hiked back up to the summit. By doing this my final ascent to the activation zone is by non-motorised means and fits within the SOTA rules.
I set my linked dipole on my 9 m quid pole against one of the supports for the shelter.
I then set out the radio and lamp ready for the 10:00 pm start.
Apart from a cyclist who came over to see what was going on, I had an uninterrupted hour on air. Conditions on this hill were not too good as I had S8 noise all the time, occasional peaking at S9+30.
I made enough QSOs to qualify the summit and a good contest score as well.
I’ll know in a month or two when the results are published how I have gone.
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