some photos of the WIA Winter VHF UHF Field Day contest activity from Manly Warringah Radio Society operating portable at Terrey Hills QF56oh on Saturday afternoon 24th June 2023
run special event callsign of vi100mb
https://phwl.org/2023/vhf-field-day/
Spring 2022 VHF/UHF Field Day - Manly-Warringah Radio Society - YouTube 6minute video summary, 26th-27th November, 2022
The next John Moyle Field Day Contest will be held over the weekend of the 19th-20th March 2022 and will run from UTC 0100 on the Saturday to 0059 on the Sunday (24hr period)
I planning to head out west for the weekend and Manly Warringah Radio Society (VK2MB) is also planning to operate portable too.
Good luck to all participants, hopefully now that we starting to get ahead of Covid, many of us can go portable for the contest.
visited the Mt.Nelson Signal Station, this was visual signalling, not RF signalling, it was used for flag semaphore from Colonial days. This site was impressive, this would be good for a RF Field Day Contest site, I hope the VK7's do use it, its great for VHF, UHF and SHF, a good clear 180 degree view, from west to n.w.. Tasmania , through nth, n.e and round through to ZL direction. Although Mt. Wellington is considerably higher, the unpredictability of the weather for top of Mt.Wellington makes it too much of a gamble when you want to run a radio contest portable station. I have a seen a video from Hayden VK7HH up Mt.Wellington getting blasted with wind and rain, that's not good when trying to work weak signal DX.
We were over at South Arm on a nice clear sunny day and within half an hour we could see this cloud appear then engulf the top of Mt.Wellington, and we also had that happen on the day we went up to top of Mt.Wellington, go from sunny day in Hobart, take 25minute drive to the top and find different weather, being engulfed in low cloud and freezing winds. I got a photo example of it here, showing top of Mt.Wellington there one minute, gone the next.
Apart from that, I was impressed with Tasmania, I would like to go back, but next time take a car loaded with RF gear across on Spirit of Tasmania to do a Field Day Contest from VK7, that would be good for a bucket list. The VK7's have a lot of accessible mountain tops, with unobstructed water views back to the mainland, ideal for radio field day contests. I don't know what is best, go to Hobart work locals , or go somewhere up along the top coast of VK7 to work back to mainland.
