ZS6BNE's Blog

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Sids RaDAR Challenge - November 2020

Posted: 14 Nov 2020 03:42 AM PST
https://zs6bne.wordpress.com/2020/11...november-2020/



Sid ZS5AYC and his wife Adele ZS5APT are regular SOTA activators and take
part in all the RaDAR Challenges too. This is Sids report




Saturday morning for Adele and I started at 04:45, the summit we had decide
to activate was between Kokstad and Underberg, we had deciding to first
activate the summit ZS/KN-145 Belfast and then start the RaDAR challenge to
coincide with the other RaDAR operators, this was the first time in South
Africa that there would be so many RaDAR ops and we were excited to be part
of the challenge.




We misjudged the time it would take to reach the summit and after hiking up
we were 19 minutes behind schedule. After the first few minutes we realized
that this would have to be our first RaDAR station, because the temperature
was already 26°, we needed to keep operating because the chasers were
piling up, within an hour we had made 17 contacts, with Eddie ZS6BNE being
our first RaDAR to RaDAR contact.








I set off for my kilometre walk, but once we had descended our friends
asked if we were still up on the summit, we then went back into the
activation zone and set up to make contact with them, unfortunately they
couldn’t hear us, so we broke station, and I continued with my walk, with
Adele making her way down in the Toyota.




We quickly set up station and started calling, making 4 contacts, one with
Denise (ZS1DS) who was participating in the Day of the YL.




As we had spent so much time activating the summt, we decided to drive 6km,
big mistake ……. the trip down on the farm rode took us nearly an hour to
reach the 6km distance, I would have walked the 1km faster.




After the 5 contacts we drove the next 6 kilometres but by the time we had
set up we only had 5 minutes to make 5 contacts. We managed 3 contacts
before our time was up.




All in all we had so much fun, making contact with three of the other RaDAR
stations.




Looking forward to the RaDAR Challenge in April 2021.