In 2007, a group a local operators decided to activate club station VK7OTC during the annual Australian RD Contest. Penstock Lagoon in the centre of Tasmania was an ideal location, being an electrically remote location meant that the effects of radio interference from other devices (QRM) would be negligible.
Murray (VK7ZMS), Richard (VK7ZBX), Clayton (VK7ZCR) and I took two trips in the lead up to the RD Contest in order to prepare the site for operations. These trips were recorded for posterity by the wonders of Youtube.
Setup Day 1
Setup Day 2
The day of the contest finally arrived, and with each setup day the temperature had been getting progressively colder. It should really have been no surprise that we arrived at Penstock Lagoon in the snow.
The contest was great fun, although we soon realised that having an amazing noise floor could be infuriating to make contacts with other, not so fortunate stations. Being able to say the signal strength is 0 and readability 5 whilst amusing at first soon became frustrating when the stations we were hearing clearly could not hear us at all.
RD Contest
Overall it was a great weekend out, though after operating nearly constantly for 24 hours, we were hoarse from calling CQ and completely exhausted from lack of sleep. Although we won no prizes, the project that was activating a station in near perfect conditions for radio communications was a reward in itself