A unique activation experience running high power with ZS6LZ, worth 8 points
I had been in touch with Brandon, ZS6LZ as a previous activator of this summit. He advised that the summit and access road are part of a game reserve on farm land, with the owner "twitchy" about allowing access. However, as he knew the owner, Brandon kindly offered to accompany me and drive us both to the summit in his 4x4!
This was a great opportunity to operate with a local ham and gain access to a restricted summit, so of course I jumped at the opportunity.
We gained access to the reserve through the gate shown and proceeded to the summit on the track - this was in fact in very good condition for a dirt track, and with permission my small hire car would have been able to proceed around half way up, reducing the length of hike needed.
Brandon's other motivation was to experiment with operating QRO, so his 4x4 enabled us to get his FT-710, a linear amplifier, ATU and 2 large lithium batteries to the summit, along with a very civilised table and chair set.
The summit is pretty flat, providing a large activation zone, so we chose a spot away from the commercial masts and set up the station. We used Brandon's homebrew linked dipole, cut for 10, 20, 30 and 40m, offering DX possibilities on 10m (where the QRO would hopefully pay dividends).
The linked dipole was oriented to maximise gain SSW/NNE for local contacts (pointing to the Western Cape) and then a small adjustment to maximise gain to western Europe and hopefully North America. We spent 1.5 hours operating jointly on 40, 30 and 20m, logging 28 local ZS QSOs up and down the country, then switched to 10m for a further hour where we managed a further 24 QSOs all into Europe. I was delighted when F4WBN called first on 10m; Christian is my biggest chaser when operating in Europe!
With grateful thanks to ZS6LZ for a great activation experience.
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