Inverleigh Flora Reserve
Saturday Sep 3, 2022
Taking advantage of a Friday off of work, and having a few other odds and ends I needed to take care of, I picked a park not too far from home that I hadn’t been to before.
Best access for 2wd vehciles is from the south off of Common Rd, I continued further in to the park in a 2wd SUV, but besides some large potholes it was no problem (either way my reading of the map says being stopped on the side of the road is within the park)
I started out experimenting with a new ‘random’ wire on 10m, and tried 12,15 & 17m with no luck. The day was getting on a bit, so jumped on to 20m, and made my first EU phone contacts, but with some low signal reports. I accidentally used one of the SSTV calling frequencies, so noted that mistake to avoid next time.
Dropped in to CW, and wow this was a new level. I’d never heard 3-4 people all calling at the same time in CW and so I was stumped for a little while I tried to pick out some partial callsigns and wrangle the pile up in to something I can manage. Was very happy that my instant character recognition practice was paying off, 6 months ago I probably would have been scared off.
By this time the sun was getting down to the horizon, and jumped on to 40m phone to catch the regular hunters, and Friday afternoon after work gave me another large batch of contacts, but in the much more casual and friendly way VK operators normally are.
Didn’t realise how quickly the day had cooled off until I turned the radio off to pack up, so made the most of the heater to try and warm back up.
Still considering other antenna support options as the strapping a squid pole to a tree was more painful today with foilage that continually tangled the wires. Need to look in to something like a towbar mount because I usually have a car handy for park activations (and wouldn’t go astray in poor weather either)
