Named in honour of Andrew VK3ARR and his handbrake turns and Scandinavian flicks**. This is now known as handbrake turn hill. ** Andrew didn’t actually undertake such monouvers, just longed for a BDA Ford escort sideways.

The EMDRC club field day site is around 5km from this previously unnamed summit, and with me being so close to a sota summit, and having done all the setup jobs friday night, instead of sitting around waiting for the contest to start, i went for a drive and short walk to activate this 4 point summit.

I arrived around ~9:45am local time and parked the car in a small cleared area at the top and set about walking down the hill to the north of the summit to leave the activation zone and then back up to the cleaning. Arrived back, and started the setup.

There was a lack of stumps of poles, but I found a low branch of a very accommodating tree that allowed me to secure the squid pole and ran out the random bit of wire for the end fed vertical and Z-match. I’ve settled on my 12.5m random bit of wire for the moment (until i get around to building the linked dipole) as its a nice manageable length in the bush.

The spot is pretty non descript, lots of trees and a road along the ridge. the forest is nice and it has a lot of bird life if you are also into twitching.

Im now also using two ground wires, one ~¼ wave length on 40m and one ~¼ wave length on 20m. I have no idea if they help, but they seem to work!.

Id spotted for 10:15am start and was a couple of minuets early, calling on 40m, with a good selection of stations for mid morning saturday. Band conditions were generally good, given the CME the sun had thrown at us earlier in the week.

After working 40m and emptying the cue, i headed up to 20m as I always do, i self spotted and put out a couple of calls, eventually working Dave VK4OZY in Queensland, (i think he is actually my first sota chaser from vk4).

My 20m exploits have been very miss, i always activate on 20m, but haven’t had much luck, I guess 40m is easier for ~1000km south eastern Australian contacts, and allows standard and F calls to join in also?

After half an hour of playing on the radio, it was time to pack up and head back to the contest site in readiness for the start of the main show, but it was fun to activate this summit and hand out some points. thanks all.

The View…