And so, it begins.

The ZL1 Summits went ‘live’ for SOTA on the 1st of December and Andrew, VK3ARR must have been charging his batteries the night before because he summited and logged ZL1/WL-101, Hawkins hill the very same day.

The weather unfortunately wasn’t co-operative in terms of stunning landscape photography with our dashing activator planting a vertical antenna on a rugged peak, so the fuzzy photo to the right is what we’ve got..

Ron, VK3AFW was the only contact in the log for first ZL SOTA points before Andrew needed to pack up and de-hill, so no activator points in the bag but ZL-SOTA became a real thing, and one assumes the first of many activations!

Subsequently Andrew successfully activated ZL1/AK-023 Mount Eden and ZL1/AK016 Rangitoto, where the weather was much more conducive to SOTA photography and I’m sure was much more enjoyable to boot as wandering around in eery swamp like mist is never that much fun, although certainly better than any day in the office I can think of.

You can read all of the details, and see all the photos from Andrews ZL1 summit activations on his excellent SOTA blog at https://vk3arr.wordpress.com/.