VKFF-0129 – D’Aguilar National Park

I was quite excited about this activation. D’Aguilar National Park has a few SOTA peaks, so it was a good opportunity to do WWFF activation and activate my first summit at the same time.

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SOTA Ref # Summit name Altitude Latitude Longitude
VK4/SE-032 Mt Samson 760 152.7705 -27.3033
VK4/SE-039 Kluvers Lookout 683 152.7028 -27.2054
VK4/SE-043 Nth of My Byron 662 152.6627 -27.0888
VK4/SE-045 South of Mt Sim Jue 659 152.6781 -27.2626
VK4/SE-060 Mt Archer 547 152.6666 -27.0087
VK4/SE-116 Mount Samson 690 152.8013 -27.3018
VK4/SE-117 Tenison Woods Mtn 770 152.7512 -27.2953

The choice was to go to Mount Glorious and operate from Tenison Woods Mountain, which is SOTA VK4/SE-117.

The weather wasn’t very promising, it was already raining in Brisbane all morning but I was hoping that it would clear by the time I get to the mountain. I left home around 1 PM and I was at Mount Glorious an hour later.

To reach the psummit you need to park off the main road and walk some 150m through the lush rainforest to get there. At this point the rain was bucketing and I had to give up on the SOTA activation this time.

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I drove a few hundred meters back and parked in the side road. Although Google Earth shows that this spot has nearly the same altitude as the summit, this is incorrect. The summit is significantly higher, much more than 25m higher than the spot I operated from.

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Considering this, and the fact that I operated from the car, means that this is not a SOTA activation, only WWFF.

I had to wait for about 20 minutes for the rain to ease off to erect the antenna, a 7m squid pole and linked dipole (15/20/40m). Once set up I was on the air and the 15m was dead again, but 20m was excellent.

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I did most of the contacts on 20m (35 QSOs). About an hour and a bit later I moved to 40m, but the band was very noisy (S9+ QRN) but I managed to log 30 QSOs in about 90 minutes that I spent on the band.

Before leaving I spent some time listening around on 40m and I could hear quite a few EU stations via long path, but they couldn’t copy me with my 7m high inverted vee.

Because of the rain, most of visitors and hikers had left the mountain by 4 PM. I left just after 6. The drive back home was a bit eery but so beautiful. I drove back relatively slowly with my car windows down (the rain had stopped by now) and I din’t see anyone on the road all the way back to The Gap. Some 45 minutes of driving and not a single person, not a single car on the road. I stopped a couple of times to take some more photos and it felt like I had the entire mountain only for myself. It was truly amazing.

Mount Glorious is exactly that – glorious. It’s an absolute must-do if you are visiting Brisbane. If you live in or around Brisbane and you still haven’t been there, well… seriously???

Below are some photos I took yesterday, I hope you enjoy Mount Glorious despite the weather.

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