A little bit ‘after’ the event, but nonetheless here it is, I felt like writing a bit today 
So it was planned that Simon (VK3XEM) and myself were to head out into the wilds for the weekend and participate in the VK Shires amatuer radio field day contest. After a last minute rush on required equipment on both sides of the fence we finally declared we had what was needed for the weekend, at least radio wise anyway!
I set off from Geelong, and stopped over in Trawalla, just outside of Ballarat to await Simon’s arrival, several hours had passed and still no arrival. A quick phone call later revealed Simon was stuck in roadworks on the Western Ring road, and had being for sometime prior to my call. Back to sleep for me…
Simon eventually made it down, and we then headed for our choosen location, with a stop-over in Beaufort to grab some supplies of the food variety. We then headed bush for Ben Nevis, I had only being to Ben Nevis once before (in Summer) and as it was now dark, things were quite different. To cut a long story short, we had a fair bit of drama finding the right track(s), only to eventually end up on the wrong track anyway, which resulted in Simon getting bogged in his car, and me giving him heaps over the radio for his slack driving capabilities, only seconds later I to was also bogged in the bus – complete with a fully loaded trailer.
After getting out of this mess, Simon pulled rank – as what I’m not sure, but he pulled rank anyway and we headed back into Ararat, with the plan of going to the Roadhouse and getting something to eat, since we were both pretty hungry and cold by this stage.
On the way to the roadhouse Simon spotted Greenhill Lake Reserve (see other post re this), and we left the bus and trailer at the roadhouse and did a recon of the reserve, which ended up to be our operating location. The viewing tower made a great position to string my long-wire and Simon’s broad-band dipole from. Although my long-wire, at 60 metres long, or near on 200 foot in the old scale, was errected sloping downwards, and away from the lake. So any of the ‘so-called’ takeoff effect was going to be minimal. In hindsight we would have being better setting up on the edge of the carpark and running the antennas up onto the tower, rather than off the tower as it was.
Was it cold?
Bloody oath, cold enough to knock the nuts off an eskimo!
So we spent several of the night hours wrapped up in blankets and multiple jumpers and daks just to stop from becoming uncomfortably numb. All in all, despite our trials and dramas with our original location we still had a good weekend and both made some good contacts.
By the way, I thrashed the full-call 
I think if we participate in another winter or winter’ish field day we will more carefully select our location, I wouldn’t work from Greenhill Lake again, its not a real good spot radio wise. And I don’t think even in Summer months we would have got the bus and trailer up to the top of Ben Nevis anyway, its pretty tough going.
The Spring VHF/UHF field days are not far around the corner, in November, so maybe I can rope Simon into venturing out for that one. Although I think we may have to do some scouting for a better location of which to operate from, as height is king with VHF/UHF, we need to find an accomodating anthill.
