We’ve had some fantastic weather down in VK7 recently, and today I decided to take full advantage of it with a solo trip to Mt Field National Park. This was mainly supposed to be a photography mission today, with the FT-817 thrown in “just in case”, however arriving at the park and seeing maybe around 100 cars I decided to put the photography on hold until later in the afternoon and headed up to Wombat Moore.
The linked dipole was in the car today, as fun as the EFHW is, the Dipole is much easier to set up as free standing.
Conditions were surprisingly good locally on 40m, with 7 of my contacts being locals, and I was particularly heartened to see many foundation licensees on air. It was also great to make so many park-to-park contacts with over half the contacts being with other VKFF Sites.
Half way through my operating period, I was quite bemused when a large SUV full of tourists pulled up. Impressively, they decided the best place to park was right under my antenna, and then left the engine running when they got out, so that I could enjoy the ignition noise. They then spent the next 20 minutes taking photos of where they pulled up, while getting up really close to the antenna wire, almost touching it. They were completely oblivious to the fact I was transmitting and by the end of the encounter, I wished I had something with more watts that an FT-817 so they could get another new experience on their holiday – RF Burn!
In all, I operated from around 1.25pm to 3.00pm, making 14 contacts, 7 from VK7, 3 from VK3, 2 VK5 P/2 and a VK1 (20m +40m)
Having packed up, I then headed back down to the welcome area of the park at a blistering average speed of 15km/h because the driver in front of me shouldn’t have had their car on that quality of road, was tippy-toeing it back down, and was inconsiderate enough to not let anyone pass at the multitude of passing bays along the way down. Very frustrating!