Mt St. Phillack VK3-VT006

This is the second time I have activated Mt. St Phillack, VK3/VT-006.  Peter, VK3ZPF and I were keen to do it again after an aborted attempt to get there a few months ago due to bad weather.

This time we went in from the Mt. St. Gwinear carpark north of Erica.   The turn off to the Mt. Gwinear road is 22.3 km from Erica.  After turning left into the Mt St Gwinear road, it is about 5km on the good condition 2wd gravel road to the car park.   The weather turned out superb for bush walking, it was not too cold or hot, around 10 degrees.

It took about 1.5 hours from the car park to the summit of Mt. St. Phillack via Mt. St. Gwinear (~1 hour).

St. Gwinear

There were pockets of snow on the way up and only on a couple of occasions it went over the walking track.

Once at the summit, I set up on 40m and Peter set up on 12m.  The squid pole was jammed into the rock cairn.  I made some contacts on 40m and Peter worked a Texas station, AD5A on 12m.  Peter moved to some other bands for the Keith Roget Memorial Parks Award and I set up on 12m.

Antennas on the cairn

Peter’s operating spot

817 setup

The_40m_EFHW was used on 12m, it seems to resonate on 12m and I was keen to find out how it radiated.  After spotting on 12m, I also worked AD5A on 12m, so it seems that it was radiating.  On our return I emailed Mike and thanked him for the contacts.  He made a post on his blog about the contacts. We operated for about 1.5 hours and then packed up for the trip back.  On the way back we decided to take the lower track (Cascade Track) around Mt. St. Gwinear rather than over the top on the way up.

A very enjoyable walk!

Fuel economy for the trip was 7.0 l/100km of diesel.

Alpine Track Junction

Cascade Track