Its does not take much for Adele and to head off in search of a summit to activate, such was the case on Saturday 2 June 2019 we chose Mantshahlolo which is located in the greater Ixopo area of KZN
To find the access road, in the forest, Adele took Google maps and added pins to indicate where we should turn, you could ask why, well in most cases when you in the forest you lose GPS and Cell phone reception, this system she worked on, worked extremly well, once we reached the summit, the view from the top looking out over the forest was spectactular.
Band conditions were not the best, our first contact was with Jonathan ZR1ARB on 40M with a 5&5 signal we then worked Roy ZS6RW and Brian ZS6BV with 5&9 signals, 30M was as usual very good down to the Cape with Neel ZS10B. the station consisted of a ICOM 703 using a LiPo battery the antenna was a linked dipole for 20M,30M and 40 M
Pieter ZS6XT who is chasing grid squares asked us to give him a contact on 60M, we then set up the long wire antenna, for this contact we use the yaesu 857d as the ICOM 703 is not able to operate on the 60M band, we agreed on a frequency of 5.360MHz, we made the contact with Pieter receiving a 5&6 report, we find that 30M and 60M work very well at this stage.
After activating the summit with a total of 7 contacts we decided to break station and try to reach the second summit for the day which was Mnywaneni ZS/KN 240
Till next time be safe