My First SOTA Activation VK4/NH-057 Mt Stuart

This morning 12 Sept 2014 at 4am I set off from my home to Mt Stuart, about a 1 hour drive despite it being just next door. I decided to do my first ever official SOTA activation, and the first one for this region. I chose an easily accessible summit close to Townsville for my fist activation. Access to Mt Stuart VK4/NH-057 is via road almost to the summit. Additional lower car parking is available. In the spirit of SOTA, I of course chose to access the activation zone on foot.

On arrival at the summit at 5 am I set up on a picnic table. I was carrying my pedestrian mobile setup, an Icom 703 in backpack. I dropped the backpack damaging the vertical antenna and the coax and the morse key :-(. Still I had a spare linked dipole. After several failed attempts to work CW, due to the damaged key, I finally could make the key work by holding it with one hand while working it with the other.

The linked dipole was not a success on 80m despite my antenna analyser showing it as resonant, I had cut it too short- why the analyser showed it resonant I do not know. I rebuilt the 80m section on return home and it is now the correct length.

This was a good shakedown on an easy summit. I’d recommend this summit to anyone in the area as a good first summit to test your gear. I am now awaiting my 80 litre hiking pack to arrive today, so that I can activate South Pinnacle this weekend. if the pack fails to arrive, I will not be able to do it until next weekend so will do some more easy summits.