The VK/Trans Tasman Contest Adventure

Amateur Radio Operation, is a strange thing. One of the more strange activities within is the "Contest" where at the allotted time radio operators will try and make as many long distance contacts which are logged and sent to the contest runners who work out who "Wins", those winners being singled out to receive some kind of award.

Also strange is the desire to take valuable radio equipment out into harsh conditions to see how much punishment can be taken in the interests of operating radio.

So with the VK/Trans Tasman contest being run two weeks ago, and my nearly uncontrollable impulses to take the 1977 Mini Cooper on the strangest possible excursions I decided I would try to get myself, my ICOM 756 and the mini up to the top of a mountain out the back of where I used to live in rural NSW Australia where I had discovered two other radio amateurs had set up a portable station to participate in the contest. Matt Vk2ZMT and Rick VK2HFP

I arrived at the turnoff from Maitland Vale road onto the dirt track that would ascend the mountain as it was just getting fully dark. I had been up the track many times fifteen odd years ago when I would visit John who lived up the mountain, and knew to lookout for the sign that said "Private Property, Trespassers Prosecuted, No Exceptions, Go Away, Extreme Danger etc.." That's where I had to go in. I knew the track could be difficult in the mini but I could always drive carefully around and over the erosion but alas the track seemed to have been recently graded over with soft earth which hid the holes but did not prevent the mini sinking down into them, never the less I continued slowly, it was not easy.

I finally made it to the level of John Who Lived Up The Mountain's house, but alas discovered that not only was no one there, but seemingly no one had lived there for untold years.

I knew this was the right mountain and the other two radio operators had to be around here somewhere, I began to think they must have continued on up to the top of the mountain, far beyond John's house, far beyond the point I had ever gone in the past, and as I began to move further upward I realised it was far beyond the harshest conditions I had ever taken the 1977 Mini Cooper before anywhere.

Holes in the road and graded material gave way to large erosion areas and large rocks poking out of the never graded track, and it was not easy.

I reached a gate and on the other side I could see in the beam of the illegal 55/100 watt halogen lights of the 1977 Mini, just far enough to see the track go up more steeply again and even more large rocks on the track, rocks that must be considered boulders to the Mini Cooper.

I managed to contact the other operators on the two meter mobile radio in the car, they confirmed they were indeed right up the top of the mountain past the gate I was at, so I decided to press on through the gate and towards what would become the ultimate obstacles.

Through the gate I began to try and find away around the obstacles in the road, almost I got it a few times but I was revving the hell out of the Mini engine to try and pull it up over various impediments. Rocks, tree stumps, large pot-holes that if a wheel of the mini went into I'd be hopelessly stuck. But no matter how hard I tried I'd always get snagged on something and drop back down.

I tried getting out and by hand rolling away some of the larger rounder rocks that were not buried to deeply into the track, trying to clear a path I could negotiate, only barely managing to miss rolling large rocks into the Mini which was below me some meters. It was literally a Herculean effort. But alas no, I got a little further but just could not make the 1977 Mini Cooper go any further up the track.

I was only a few hundred meters from the destination at the top, but I knew there was just no way The Mini was going to do it as the oil and water temperatures were in the red and when I switched the engine off there was hissing. Knowing the damage I could already have possibly suffered from the innumerable rock hits to the bottom of the car up the track, and the last effort in trying to get up past the gate I called on one of the operators to come down and pick me up with their four wheel drive vehicle.

Failed to make the top of the hill none the less I made it up six hundred and twenty feet altitude as you can see from the topographic mapping made by the aprs/gps tracking system, with the 1977 Mini Cooper sitting about four hundred and thirty meters.



The 4wd arrived and we loaded my radio equipment and proceeded to the radio station VK2ZMT Portable, A tent on top of the mountain powered by a small 180 watt petrol generator with several wire aerials resonant on the 80 meter amateur band where the contest was being held roughly constructed and suspended from various poles around the site. The station was well appointed with a gas stove for cooking the sausages and a well stocked Esky.

It was an impressive site, this highest point in the region it was quiet and dark, also very quiet for radio interference. It was cold, very cold with wind, a chill winter bastard though dry.

Contesting had begun I was late, but the other operators had already racked up a good number of stations contacted. When I hooked up my ICOM 756 the bandscope revealed to me that the whole band within the contest limits was saturated with stations calling, a solid block of radio transmissions, one blending into the other as you'd tune through the band.

The VK/Trans Tasman contest is a straight through six hour smackdown match for stations in Australia and New Zealand to make as many contacts as possible with varying points being awarded for distance and low power(QRP) stations, short as many competitions will got for 24 and 48 hours but it's intense.

Each operator of a multi operator station such as ours(VK2ZMT Portable) must work the station for 1 hour so I knew I'd be operating 2 x 1 hour stints that night and when my turn came I fired up the ICOM 756. It was nearly impossible to find a part of the band where you could transmit, when you can call continuously is when you pick up the big points but you cannot just start operating on top of other stations. So we'd all be spending alot of time in pileups waiting to be acknowledged and exchange of information with stations already calling. Then you'd find that elusive spot on the dial where there was no one calling and start calling fast and hard, soon stations would be returning to you and the points scores would shoot up.

My automatic aerial tuner in the ICOM 756 had failed on me a week before and I had to use a manual tuner to bring the antenna into tune, and I discovered I could do that as I spoke on the radio on the fly by adjusting the loading controls on the manual tuner to give maximum dimming of the lightbulb in the tent which also ran from the small petrol generator. It was very effective.

We as a team made over 170 contacts on the night which are good numbers for such a quickly constructed portable station in a tent up a mountain out back of nowhere.



With radio it's all down to the magic of your particular location, and it doesn't really come any more magical than this location was, the adversities of getting there were well worth overcoming and the other two operators stayed the night up there whilst I always intended to drive back down and home when the contest ended after midnight.

So the adventure was far from over for myself yet as 1am rolled around and I was driven by 4wd back down to where I had left the 1977 Mini Cooper. I was already quite exhausted both mentally and physically and I had no idea whether The Mini was in any condition to get back down the mountain track. Using a torch I was able to determine that now the mini engine had cooled down there was still oil in it and still water so I knew that I had not punched a hole through anything vital to it's operation.

The Mini started and I began down the hill, it was harder going down than up really. At one stage I had my clutch foot sitting on the floor and I felt the floor pan under my foot bulge up as it was bent by a fair sided rock I was running over but I pressed on desperate to get off this diabolical mountain. I passed John Who Used To Live On The Mountain's house so I knew I was at least half way there. Numerous times The Mini would just go THUMP down into a hole which would threaten to put a hole in the sump and kill the car but no, it made it down, I got it out, but it was not easy believe me when I say that.

From there it was back onto road and back home, there were other radio amateurs still about that I could contact from the mobile radio in The Mini so if there was any serious problem with it I could always call in help, but only the drive on road at speed would tell me if The Mini was still in fully operational condition. Magically, it was. No significant impairment to it's function only superficial damage which is always anticipated when you take a vehicle like the Mini off road.

So that was the night in a nutshell, I thought it was quite an adventure, wouldn't have missed it. I could have done the contest from home, or from the radio club, but that just would not have been the same, would it.

At any rate this was not the end, I still had to run the !977 Mini Cooper down to Sydney in the next week to put my ICOM 756 into the repair shop to get the automatic aerial tuner fixed. So this is just the first part of the overall adventure.