My big child Nathan has developed a recent trait of unexpected and rather rapid onset motion sickness in the car when we travel on twisty roads.

With that in mind, we set off to join the Morrabbin and District radio club members at Mt Dandenong for a mini SOTA combined activation and promotional event. The family came along for an explore of the gardens and a picnic while I got to play some radio! (The MDRC info PDF of the event is here)

As we started heading up the tourist road, where it becomes twisty, i notice Nathan was still reading his book, I suggest that it was twisty, that he gets car sick, and it would be wise if he would stop reading and look out the window. Im fine, he protested. 30 seconds later, that delightful noise and smell sees me rapidly pulling over on a turn out lane and we began the mopping up process. Pancakes with strawberry jam, yum!

Access to Mt Dandenong requires a walk up the entry road, so I jumped out of the car at the turnoff and walked into the activation zone with my gear while the family drove in, entry is $5 per car load.

I arrive at the summit, catch up with my waiting family and try and find the other guys, i had looked at the map, but headed in the wrong direction, finally locating the stations, I setup my gear on a rock while my wife prepared the picnic lunch for the hungry children.

Ron, vk3afw, Tony vk3cat and some others (I’m terrible with names, I’ve forgotten) had setup below the main restaurant area and had different antennas and stations going working cw and ssb on 40m, 30m, 20m and 2m.

I fired up my gear, and just chased / worked a couple of Summit to Summit contacts, and ended up with 5 contacts rather then spend the time working a big activation. I did manage to work peter using the special event call sign of VI3POLIO to celebrate rotary’s work in helping to rid the world of this disease. I also tried some PSK31 on 20m, but wasn’t successful.

Finally, the kids went on a tour of the other stations and Tony allowed them to have a play with his fantastic KX3 and its morse key!, they got to send their names over morse on his radio, Nathan was very excited and impressed. Thanks Tony!

Finishing off, for the train spotters, this was in the carpark, i didn’t go any closer, as it had some people in it playing with a laptop, it sounded like a v8/supercharged falcon (FPV) and the finish suggested it was a late cycle pre production development car with brembo brakes and FPV GT wheels (rather than an all out prototype). the last of the ford falcons. 😀 Im told its most likely the last of the last of the BIG v8 Australian falcons (as a special last model XR8, since FPV no longer exists)