As part of our family xmas holiday’s, we are camping in the Kosciuszko National Park, a family favourite xmas camping location, we stay in a bush camping spot on the Thredbo river just down from the ski resort town. We enjoy this part of the world visiting most xmas times. This year, having recently become interested in SOTA, and with enough gear to make activations possible, i plan to activate a handful of the easier spots over the holiday’s.

I have a younger family, my biggest is 5 and my smallest turned 4 a couple of days ago, we haven’t ventured the full distance from the chairlift to the summit on previous holidays, only making the 4km return journey to the main lookout spot over the last couple of years with the small legs on the kids.

This year, we decided we would chance the full 13km return journey and watched the weather to ensure we found a nice day with light winds, a low temperature and minimum risk of rain or changing weather. The weather can change very quickly in the snowy mountains.

So, Yesterday, Xmas eve, december 24 had a mid teens maximum, with no chance of rain and light winds, the perfect day for the walk, we left the campsite and caught the chairlift up the mountain (the steep first 900m of the journey) and were ready for the walk around 9:45am. I had pre alerted my activation on the sota website and australian sota email list, advising a midday-12:30 activation, we were already behind schedule stating the walk.

The kids were slow, slower than we anticipated, with my little one really slowing down past the 2km lookout, luckily, my wife had her backup plan baby carrier (my kids were both carried as babies and into their toddlerhood) and while the little one is now ~15kg, carrying on the back is easier than in the arms.

The little one was carried from the rawson pass lookout/toilet up the last 1.5km assent to the summit. having taken 2 ¼ hours to get to this point, I headed on up the last section without the rest of the family quickly to ensure I had time to setup and activate before they arrived.

I arrived and setup, finally getting on air at 12:45, a little later than my planned activation time. I had almost zero noise, and could easily hear everyone I worked. Operating a little longer than anticipated. Every time I went to move bands or shut down, other people would pop up and I worked everyone I could manage in the time.

Radio was the FT-817nd at 5w, battery used was my LiFePo 8.4aH pack, 7m squid pole wedged between some rocks and a 12.5m (random) length of wire in an almost inverted V configuration with the ZM-2 ATU and equally random ~20m length of ground wire as counterpoise.

Before shutting down, I moved to 2m and tried some of the canberra guys on FM, with my handheld and then the 817 and its internal antenna, but without much luck, but then was able to hear John, VK2YW from wagga on FM, and then work John on 2m SSB, My original 7MHz contact with john saw him become a shack sloth gaining 1000 chaser points.

I had given myself until 1:30pm local time to pack up given how slow the kids were, but my lovely wife had fed the kids lunch and we took some family photos on the trig marker before they set off down the mountain at 1:15pm while I was allowed to play radio a little longer. I finally shut down around 2pm, before a quick pack-up , and started my decent at 2:10pm.

The family had nearly 1hrs head start on me, but I caught them in around 40mins just before the 2km lookout spot, and we finally arrived at the chair lift at 3:45pm, having spent 6hrs on the mountain. As promised, the kids got an ice cream when we got down the bottom of the hill.

Thanks to all who I worked, sorry I wasn’t able to work any of the VK6’s on 14MHz, I did try, and could hear you very very weakly, not enough for a contact.

My little SOTA Goats on the top of the mountain