Overview of the trip to Farina
Between Saturday the 13th June and Monday 22nd June, myself, John VK5BJE, David VK5KC, and our very dedicated wives, travelled to the north of South Australia, where we undertook a number of activations of some quite rare parks and summits.
We activated the parks as part of the VK5 National and Conservation Parks Award, and the World Wide Flora Fauna program. The summits were activated as part of the Summits on the Air (SOTA) program.
A total of 4 Conservation Parks, 4 National Parks, and 3 SOTA summits were put on air, including Lake Torrens National Park, the Gammon Ranges National Park, and Mount Scott summit (the first time this summit has been activated). Many of the parks were difficult to access. For example, to reach Lake Torrens we needed to do a 110 km round trip on a 4WD track.
On the afternoon of Wednesday 17th June and on Thursday 18th June we activated the very special call of VK100ANZAC from the old ghost town of Farina, about 650 km north of Adelaide. And why operate from Farina? Well, the 18th June was the 75 year anniversary of a secret mission during WW2 to rescue the De Gaulle family from German occupied France. And the pilot of that mission was John Napier Bell, who came from Farina.
We made a total of 220 contacts from Farina, on 80, 40, 30, and 20 metres, all around Australia, and into New Zealand, the USA, England, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Canary Islands, and Japan.
And around 1,000 QSOs were made all together during our trip up north. On a personal level, I covered around 2,500 km in the 11 days.
We have designed a special QSL card for our operation at Farina as VK100ANZAC. The QSL card can be sent for free electronically via email, by sending a request to vk5pas@wia.org.au, or the card can be printed and mailed, by sending a stamped self addressed envelope to Paul VK5PAS at PO Box 169 Mount Barker, S.A. 5251.
Thanks to everyone that called us during our outback odyssey. We were hampered by extremely bad weather during the first 3 days, with many outback roads shut due to overflowing creeks and poor road conditions. Unfortunately one planned SOTA summit and one National Park were unable to be activated.
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Items from the WIA broadcast
VK100ANZAC Farina QSL card
