VK2/HU-080, Summit Point by VK2NU/P and VK2WFT/P (23/08/2017)
After the marathon day out last week to Mount Carson, this weeks activation called for something closer to home. Including a side trip to pick up Tony, VK2WFT, Summit Point is less than 1 hours drive and is the second closest SOTA Summit to my home QTH.
Other operators blogs suggested that 2WD access was possible to within a 100m or so of the summit, via Sugarloaf Range Road, and then the Summit Point Access Trail. However, the weather was nice, and we were both keen to stretch our legs. The decision was made to park at Mount Sugarloaf and walk to the summit.
There is plenty of parking around Mount Sugarloaf, with a sealed car park just below the radio towers, but there is also a dirt parking area at the intersection of Mount Sugarloaf Road, and Sugarloaf Range Road (which we used).
The walk is pretty straight forward, and as suggested, would be good for 2WD vehicles, except in very wet conditions..
The Trail crosses a saddle region between Mount Sugarloaf and Summit Point, but climbing is minimal and the walking is easy, to the turn off for Summit Point Trail. There is not a lot to see en-route, except were the Road crosses a fire-trail, with views to the East and West.
After approximately 3.5-4km on the Sugarloaf Range Road, the Trail branches, and we turn right onto Summit Point Access Trail Rd. This road is slightly steeper, and rougher, but still a pretty easy walk or drive.
The summit is located to left of the Summit Point Access Trail, about 250m past the gate on the track. There is a trail branching off around the back of the summit, but we couldn't find a well defined track to the top, so just climbed through the scrub. I'm pretty sure the route we took was 'wrong', and required some tricky scrambling and climbing.
There is little to see from the summit, due to the dense tree coverage, but at least there are plenty of options for antenna supports.
On the issue of supports, the Haverford Pole was left in the car today after last weeks success of using a catapult, fishing line and weight. Unfortunately, I'd left the fishing line and weight at home, and my first attempt to fire my spare weight, attached to a length of string Tony had in his backpack, resulted in it wrapping around a branch... When trying to pull this down, the string snapped leaving the only lead weight dangling 10m above ground!
Short on string, and ideas, we tied a fist sized rock to our remaining length, and managed to get this over a branch on the second go, and after some unraveling, had the OCF Dipole in the air in an inverted V configuration.
First off we had a prearranged 2m QSO with VK2BPL, using Tony's Baofeng... Our first ever VHF SOTA QSO. ON HF VK3PF, Peter was first in the log, as usual, on 40m SSB and he got us to QSY to 80m to try and work VK2JDL/P for a S2S contact on VK2/CT-003, as we couldn't hear him on 40m.
This didn't work out, probably because the OCF Dipole we used is only 20m long, and whilst the KX3 is happy to tune it, efficiency is probably not that great.
After qualifying the summit on 40m-SSB, I switched to CW (5 contacts), and then Tony had a run on 20m-SSB, with signals to ZL being especially good. We finally managed to get our S2S with VK2JDL/P on 20m-SSB for the last contact of the day before heading back.
The total walk was about 9km, and we arrived back at the car still feeling pretty fresh.
And finally, although the views on the trail are not that great, the carpark at Mount Sugarloaf offers good views across Newcastle, down to Lake Macquarie, and out to the Pacific.
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