On Sunday morning (10th May 2015), Andrew VK1NAM picked up John VK5BJE and I from outside of our motel in Canberra, and took us up to the top of Mount Ainslee, VK1/ AC-040.  We had arranged with Andrew the day before at the WIA AGM, to head out for a couple of SOTA activations.

I had snuck up to Mount Ainslee the night before with Peter VK3PF for a quick 2m activation, but I was looking forward to going back to Ainslee during the day for a HF activation and to enjoy the views of Canberra.

I found the photograph below which shows a panorama of the site for Canberra, taken from Mount Ainslie, c. 1910.  Amazing how things have changed.

Above:- Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

The views from Ainslee were excellent, but it was blowing an absolute gale.  Fortunately the rain was holding off, but it was very windy and very cold.  Not as cold as Friday’s activation of Mount Ginini, but netherless it was very chilly.

Above: – Map showing the location of Mount Ainslee.  Courtesy of mapcarta.com

We had parked in the car park and walked up the steps to a walking track at the highest point of the summit.  Andrew used a metal point on the summit to secure his squid pole to with the use of some octopus straps.  With some difficulty due to the high winds, we raised the squid pole into place with Andrew’s home brew squid pole attached.  For this activation we ran 5 watts from Andrew’s Yaesu FT-817.

John VK5BJE started off first and had quickly accrued his required 4 contacts to qualify the summit for SOTA.  I then jumped into the ‘driver’s seat’ and made a quick 5 contacts on 40m, including a Summit to Summit contact with Peter VK3PF who was portable on SOTA peak, Livingstone Hill, VK2/ SM-093.

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I worked the following stations:-