Today I made a day trip to Coochiemudlo Island (IOTA OC137) with my wife and daughter and I thought I’d take my portable radio setup with me and “see how it goes”.

Well, it went pretty good and I’ll definitely be back this weekend, weather permitting.

I operated form the park, just about 30m from the beach, but considering I used battery power I could only run low power (20watts).

I used Yaesu FT-891 with 4200mA/h LiFePO battery. The antenna was a 40/20/15 m linked dipole, set up as an inverted-v, hanging off a 7m long squid pole.

We stayed in the park for about two hours and I logged approximately 80 QSOs, mostly JA and UA0 stations, all 20m CW.

Coochiemudlo is a tiny island just off the coast of southeast Queensland, near Victoria Point in Brisbane. It belongs to the Queensland State (South Coast) South group – IOTA OC137.

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Below are a few photos of me operating and of the island itself as taken from the ferry.