The other day, I had to head to Bendigo for work, so packed the SOTA gear in the car for a quick late afternoon activation on the way home.

Mt Alexander VK3/VN-016 sits just south of Bendigo and has the local TV and FM transmitters sites on the top of it, also a tower form my organisation, so I popped in and checked the site and then went for a quick Sota Activation.

I headed across the road from the summit and walked down the hill until I was outside the activation zone, then walked back to a small clear grass meadow. It was a glorious spring day, and I set myself up in the sun. Ran out the new link dipole, picked 40m and called CQ (i didn’t even self spot).

The band conditions were great, and a nice afternoon in the sun was had chatting and working stations. and in the end, 33 contacts, the most for a SOTA activation for me. And one S2S for the extra points.

The Link dipole worked well, the Microphone compressor / amplifier worked even better with very positive reports from all chasers. It appears to sound good and increases the received signal strength by 1-2 S points.

For reference sake, i purchased a simple power meter that I put inline with the 817, the blow photo shows how much current I used over the activation. This microphone amplifier has seen a small increase in used power, as it drives the radio harder. 1hr of operation = 1.214Ah of usage.

Date:17/Oct/2014 Summit:VK3/VN-016 (Mt Alexander) Call Used:VK3BQ Points: 4 Bonus: 0