Exploring Victoria

The Victoria area has lots to offer a visitor, from the historical and museums to the outdoors. I prefer the outdoors and so on this trip I took time to enjoy a number of locations. This trip we skipped past the Island View Park, almost a heresy, and made straight to a restaurant for lunch. Later in the day we set out for a walk through Beacon Hill Park and enjoy some of the early flowers that had been planted. Most of the trees were still bare but in that state they have a gnarly look to them which can be quite lovely. We walked to the lookout area and there we rested while enjoying the light breeze and the sights to the south across the strait. On the return to the hotel I managed to capture a few more photos, mostly of trees. The park offers amazing sights in all of the seasons.

Wednesday morning found me driving to Observatory Hill to do a SOTA activation. The drive was fairly quick and the final ascent to the top was fun as it opened up a widening view of the region with each turn. At the summit is a large 100 year old telescope dome. There were a few people arriving and heading on inside it, so I guess they had some activity still ongoing after all these years. I, meanwhile, parked and started scouting for the point marked as the summit for SOTA. It wasn’t far off the parking area. The day was very windy and rain was threatening, so I didn’t want to delay getting started on the radio. I selected a dry spot to operate from and setup the yagi and started calling. It wasn’t long before I had a contact but most of the time all I was hearing was static. Later I was to learn that that static was actually people responding to me! Getting frustrated I moved numerous times trying various locations thinking it was the area not my equipment. In the end I had 3 contacts, one short of a point but at least I had it activated.