SOTA in Victoria

I was in Victoria for a few days and was able to take time to activate two summits. The first was Observatory Hill CL-023 then the next day it was Mount Douglas.

It was my first attempt on Observatory and I was able to log 3 2m contacts. Though I heard a lot of static I was only able to connect with the three stations. The weather was very windy and cold with a splash of rain so after an hour and a half of trying I packed it in and made for home and a lunch appointment. The next day the weather was much nicer and quite warm in the early afternoon while I was on the summit. I set up my 2m yagi and started making calls, again I was getting mostly static in response. eventually I did make a 2m contact. It was with a station I had reached yesterday. He stated that my signal was very intermittent. It seemed to be clear only if I held the antenna connector on the radio in a particular manner. After the contact I set up my KX2 and tried HF. I heard two station from Spain but was not able to reach them. I did finally make 3 HF contacts and so I logged the 4 contacts required for a SOTA point. 

Later when I got back home from my trip I was able to determine that the sma connector on the IC-90A requires a longer pin than a standard sma male connector has, so the coax to the yagi was not properly connecting to the radio. I will need to find a solution to this problem before my next activation.