On Monday night, 9th September, 2013, I decided to head back up to One Tree Hill, VK3/ VS-036, just out of Ararat, and book into the 7130 DX Net.  Why I decided to do this in reflection, I do not know.  It was absolutely blowing a gale outside and it was freezing cold.

And setting up the equipment was certainly very interesting.  It took a long time to erect the antenna in the dark.  The only aid being my head lamp.  I used a fencepost to secure the squid pole and stretched out the legs of the dipole.  How the squid pole did not snap in the very blustery wind, I do not know. The wind was gusting up to 80 kph.

The net was being held on 7.135 due to the Over The Horizon Radar, but I could still hear the OTHR choofing away on 7.135.  I could only just hear Roy VK7ROY who was Net Control, and unfortunately he had no copy on me at all.  So with the assistance of Rick VK2HFP I booked into the net.  Other than poor propagation to Tasmania, conditions appeared to be very good on 40m.  I was able to work into New South Wales and Queensland with good 5/8-9 signal reports being given for my little 5 watt signal.  I even worked into New Zealand with no problems at all receiving 5/5 & 5/6 signal reports from Caleb ZL2TCR and Brian ZL2ASH.

But sadly, there were very few checkins on the net.  The only DX was William FO5JV.  William gave me a call, but we were just not quite able to make the QSO.

Considering the lack of checkins and the attrocious weather conditions, I decided that the warmth of the motel room was a bit more appealing to the cold and windy summit.  So I packed up and headed back to the motel in Ararat.

My 2nd night time activation had not really gone to plan.  I only managed to work 5 stations as follows:-

Rick VK2HFP; Caleb ZL2TCR; Brian ZL2ASH; Brian VK4FXAC; & John VK2FALL/qrp (8 watts).