The weather forecast this weekend looked horrible for New Zealand Auckland south, so we decided to make a weekend of it up North. For the first summit we decided to attempt ZL1/NL-039. This is an unnamed summit on the Eastern end of the Brynderwyn ranges. I worked Soren ZL1SKL from here a few months earlier while on ZL1/AK-005 Tamahunga so I was keen to get the complete. This activation also aligned with an activity day in VK so there should hopefully be some summit to summit action.
The walk up is along forestry access roads so is fairly easy going. With the sun shining and calm winds we couldnt imagine how the weather was so bad elsewhere.
We were active both sides of UTC midnight. For the first “day” we made 8 contacts, 6 of which were summit to summit contacts. After UTC midnight we made a further 4 contacts all summit to summit contacts. A total of 21 summit to summit points were gathered from this activation.
The bands have been a little difficult with the skip distance on 7 MHz being larger than normal during the day. 5 MHz has proved very useful for close range contacts. VK is workable on 7 and 14 MHz but is usually accompanied with QSB.
Details
Summit – ZL1/NL-039
Height – 397 m ASL (100 m ascent)
Access – Cullen Rd – Waipu. Track starts from the forestry gate on the right.
Nominal time to summit – 30 minutes walk.
Mobile and internet coverage from the summit – Vodafone is OK at the summit.
Summit Marker – Trig.
Land Access Permission – DoC land – not required.