Activation of Maclear's Beacon on 1 January 2003
Andrew Roos, ZS1AN


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To celebrate the incorporation of the South African Association into Summits on the Air, Rudi ZS6DX and I decided to activate summits on 1 January, the official start date for SOTA SA. I chose Maclear's Beacon ZS/WC-043, the highest point of Table Mountain, both because Table Mountain is such a well known landmark and because it has a cableway and I wasn't sure that I would feel like climbing the day after new year's eve! Although only a 2-pointer, at 1088m Maclear's Beacon is a good 100m higher than Scafell Pike, so it's still a fair climb.

I decided to activate in the afternoon as propagation to Europe on 15m and 20m is usually best in the early morning and late afternoon, and there was no way I was going to get up the mountain at 6am on New Year's Day! My YL Stacey ZR1SC and I arrived at the cableway about 1:30pm. After taking the cableway up, it's still about an hour's walk to Maclear's Beacon. This was pleasant although hot - temperatures in Cape Town soared to 38C, although it was only in the low 30s on the Mountain.

The Table Mountain Cableway (Pic: Stacey ZR1SC)

After arriving at the beacon we set up the station - my recently completed Elecraft K1 QRP CW transceiver, complete with internal batteries. My antenna was a dipole fed with 300 ohm twin and matched using the K1's built-in ATU. This seemed to work well on all the bands available on my K1 - 40m, 30m, 20m and 15m. For a mast I used a 5.7m telescopic pole (also known as a "roach pole") which Stacey's mum had kindly brought me as a Christmas present from the UK as they aren't available in South Africa. I anchored this in the ground using a stake that's inserted through the middle of a dowl correctly sized to fit inside the thick end of the pole. I used 3 guys made from monofilament nylon "builder's line" attached with a cable tie about 2/3 of the way up the mast. This setup takes less than 15 minutes to erect and should survive quite windy conditions.

I was QRV by 1330 UTC but the first hour or so was quite frustrating - I could hear stations on 15m, but they couldn't hear me. However about 1430 the band started opening, with a few contacts in Europe and the UK giving me poor reports. Then all of a sudden I had a flurry of stations in Eastern Europe calling and giving me 559 and 569 reports. I worked split "1 up" to minimise the effect of European QRM in the small pileup that developed. Then as suddenly as they had appeared, the European stations vanished again. I stayed on 15m a bit longer, then went to 20m about 1600 UTC, but with little success. Finally just as I was about to QRT Ian ZS5IAN called me which was a pleasant surprise and we finally had the K1 to K1 QSO we've been looking forward to.

Operating on Table Mountain with Maclear's Beacon
in the background (Pic: Stacey ZR1SC)

I closed down at 1700 UTC to give us time to walk back to the cableway before sunset at 1830. The trip back was uneventful, with a pleasant chat about SOTA with some of the locals on the 2m repeater. Cloud had come in below the mountain top so we seemed to be walking on an island in the middle a a misty sea, with several other summits also poking through.

Definitely a worthwhile experience, and many thanks to all the guys who listened out for me.