Today was a public holiday in Melbourne for a horse race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup. I couldn’t care less about glue pots, so the family headed out for a picnic lunch and a drive into the local hills. It was a lovely day in Melbourne, mid 20’s and sunny blue skies.

We headed to a family favourite location, Mt Donna Buang, we often end up at this mountain for a sunday drive, as its a lovely part of Victoria, with a cold climate rainforest, very tall old gum trees and wonderful wildlife, it also has some of Melbourne’s best driving roads, that i enjoyed in a past life in a fast car i owned before children 😀

We arrived at the mountain just after mid-day, and feeding the two hungry children was the main priority. We had some lunch and I then made the appropriate decent and assent for this summit with my case. (ill do some real walking/sota one day). The over flow car park down the hill (where they lock the gate when it snows) and back.

I setup my pole to a picnic table and got the gear ready while the kids and my wife headed off for an explore of the fire lookout tower and local bush. You can see the photos they took of my setup looking down form the fire tower.

The sun has been a little active over the last couple of days and band conditions have been atrocious, conditions were challenging but I spotted myself and was able to work 6 contacts in quick succession. Thanks for those that put up with my WEAK signal.

I then tuned around the different bands, spotting and calling on 20m and 12m, without any luck (no local chatter on either band also), I even went looking for beacons on 6m. Before being alerted to another 40m sota activator Rod, vk2twr, and was able to work S2S before packing up and continuing our family afternoon out in the national park.

And a quick Video of the operating position 😀