9 August 2019
KuDwabe
Friday 09 August is womans day in South Africa, which is also a public holiday, this making it an ideal day for a SOTA activation, we decided on KuDwabe ZS/EL-055 which is a 4 pointer at an altitude of 1519 meters which is found in the grid square KF48Iiw. We planned an early start which would hopefully get us to the summit by 07.30 UTC, at this point we were not sure if we would gain access to the summit, once we reach Kokstad we went passed Mount Ayliff bought a coffee and then onto Mt Frere where we turned off the N2 heading in North Westerly direction for about 39 km
After travelling on unpaved road for 4 k/m we come to a place at the bottom of the summit where we could park, the road you see in the background is the access road to the commercial towers that are situated further up the road, we checked our packs to make sure we had everything we required for our activation, according to our GPS, we still were about 350 meter from the activation point, the climb to the summit was not too difficult although we took our time making sure we were not stepping on loose rocks, after about 40 minutes we reached the beacon on the top of the summit, this is always a give us a sense of achievement.
Although the wind was blowing quite hard it was not too cold, where the beacon was situated the ground to the left and right and behind the beacon dropped away very steeply, making it impossible to use the beacon as an antenna support, I rolled out the antenna to see where the best place would be to erect the antenna before I could hoist the squid pole, Adele had by this time set up the IC703 and was waiting for the antenna.
With the antenna up, we were ready to call CQ, our first contact was with Brian ZS6BV, Micheal ZS6MSW, Ed ZS6UT then Peter ZR6VJ Brian and Peter were also activating a summit ZS/LP-080 which was a S2S for us In total we had 14 contacts with signal ranging from 42 to 59 as per usual we had a good contact with Neels ZS1OB and Pieter V51PJ on 30M
Today I was so proud of Adele when she attempted and made her first CW contact from a summit with Eddie ZS6BNE thank you Eddie for your patients, and slowing down form your normal speed to enable Adele to make the contact. we packed up and started down from the summit at about 09.15 UTC, coming down we took it really slow and easy.
Once at the bakkie (UTE) it was coffee time and as usual we discussed the morning activation, I must admit climbing to the top of a summit and activating it is always an huge sense of achievement, thanks again to our many chases who make all the effort worthwhile, another great day out in the countryside in the beautiful country of South Africa. Thanks once again