26th January 2019. SOTA Activation of GW/NW-042.

First Summit of the day.

GW/NW-042. 26th January 2019.

Altitude 577M. Grid SJ 176465.

Today I was going to activate the two summits of the Horseshoe pass. I chose the furthest one away from the car park first Moel y Gamelin. I had left home in Telford at 06.15 a.m. as I needed to get some fuel (I forgot on Friday night). I managed to get to the car park opposite the Ponderosa Cafe grid SJ 19239 48068 for 07.29 a.m. sorted my gear out and started walking.

It looked as though sometime last year they had a heather burn as most of the heather has now gone. The ascent took me over the top of Moel y Faen and eventually arrived at my activation summit for this morning at 08.11 a.m. time for a quick selfie and then move just off the summit and out of the wind. I set up my Yaesu FT-270 Hand held and my Homebrew 2M yagi. I had a quick scan over the band and heard G6DFD (Mike) talking to G0HCT (Brian) two of TDARS members from my own club. I heard Mike say lets go to S20 to listen out for Paul on his SOTA activation. So I gave a quick break break and had my first QSO at 08.24 a.m.
This followed quickly with a further three TDARS members and summit qualified. I wanted a few more as I was slightly ahead of my schedule, I gave a quick CQ SOTA and managed to bag a further five QSO's including M1EYP/M (Tom) on his way to activate I think he said the Cloud.
Activation complete so I packed up my gear and started towards my next summit at 08.47 a.m.

Second Summit of the day.

GW/NW-043. 26th January 2019.

Altitude 565M. Grid SJ 208488.

After a good 57 minute walk I arrived, took a quick selfie and started to set up my gear. This time I wanted to use HF as well. I set up my 6M telescopic mast and my 40/30/20m SOTA Beams dipole. Time to start a CQ call on 30M, I also spotted myself on SOTA Watch. My CW is still not too fast so again I apologise  to the chasers. I managed to get my first contact at 10.13 a.m. with MW0IDX (Roger) only 22 miles away but it was a nice QSO thank you Roger. Then followed OK1ZC Czech Republic, OH9XX Finland,DJ2MX Germany, OH3GZ Finland, G0OOQ Telford and finally OK2PDT Czech Republic. I managed to qualify the summit in CW which makes my day thank you all.
I then moved onto 2M with my Yagi and bagged another 12 QSO's including MW0IDX (Roger) and G0OOQ (Sean) whom I had both managed to QSO in CW as well.

The end of another great activation at 11.25 a.m. and another 10 points towards my goal of Mountain Goat. I will add another photo below of how close the communication mast was too me but I didn't receive any interference. This photo also shows my Homebrew 2M Yagi, this cost me less than £10 to build and works really well.

Parts used to build this are as follows:
25 mm white plastic conduit
20 mm white plastic conduit
20 mm white plastic conduit T piece
20 mm to 25 mm white plastic enlarger (join the 20 mm to the 25 mm)
6 mm solid aluminium bar (3 M Length)
RG58 Coax
2 x crocodile clips (join the coax to the aluminium)

Statistics:
Distance walked 6 miles
Steps taken 12,085
equivalent flights of stairs 155
distance driving 101 miles

Equipment used:

Yaesu FT-270 2 M Handheld 5 watts

Yaesu FT-817 Multi band 5 watts

Li-Ion 18650 4200 mAh 3.7v qty 3 (12.2 v)

Homebrew 2 M Yagi

40/30/20 M linked dipole

6 M telescopic mast (fishing pole)

I have made two of the battery packs, these cost £7.99 for 4 batteries and you only use 3. I charge these with a BC-4S15D Lipo balance charger cost £11.45. all purchased from ebay.

These packs last on average 2 - 2.5 hours of constants, CQing and talking, the pack weighs 115 grams.

I have lined a few photos just to show how easy these can be made and yes they do work well. The weight is a great saving.

Thank you again to all the chasers, without you it would be a wasted day.

12th January 2019. SOTA Activation of G/WB Famous 5.

Today was my first attempt at the Welsh Boarder 5 (Famous 5) all on the same day.
First Summit.
G/WB-002 Brown Clee. 12th January 2019.
Altitude 540M. Grid SO 593867.

As the famous five are basically on my doorstep I didn't need a 6 a.m. start, so I left home at 7:30 a.m. and arrived at my usual car park spot of grid SO 58548 86899 at 8:00 a.m. after a quick stop to take a great morning sunrise photo. I got all my gear ready and started my ascent. The equipment that I was going to use for the five summits was my Yaesu FT 270  handheld and my home brew 2m yagi. I managed to arrive at the summit at 8:23 a.m. took a quick few photos and set my gear up and started calling CQ Sota.
This was a very quick activation with only 4 QSO's, probably because I was a good 30 minutes or more before the time that I had spotted myself for, (sorry to the chasers that missed me). The cloud cover was bad on the way up after altitude of 400 m, the descent was a lot clearer.

Second Summit.
G/WB-004 Titterstone. 12th January 2019.
Altitude 533M. Grid SO 591779.

I arrived at my next car park at 9:45 a.m. grid SO 59393 77560 this is the disused quarry. This is a fairly easy ascent and I was at the summit and set up by 10:02 a.m. I had a quick look around the band and heard MW0XRT/P (Dave) on GW/NW-031 so a good start with S2S. I then gave my own CQ Sota call and managed to bag a further 10 QSO's with my final, another S2S this time with GW4TQE/P (John).

Third Summit.

GW/MW-013 Corndon Hill. 12th January 2019.

Altitude 514M. Grid SO 306969.

After a drive of about 45 minutes I arrived at my car park position at grid SO 29980 96771, I had been listening to Vicki on the Black Mountain as her signal came in and out on my route. I gave her a quick call and informed her I had arrived. Time to get to the top before I would loss the S2S. I managed to ascend and set up in 15 minutes, I was a little out of breath after that. This was far the windiest of the summits so far. I sat against the trig point and had to fight with the wind to  keep my yagi and its little mast vertical. I managed to get my S2S with MW6BWA/P (Vicki) and MW0JLA/P (Rod) on GW/SW-041 as my first two QSO's then a further 16 QSO's including S2S with G7LAS (Stewart) on a HEMA summit G/HCE-002 and G7HEM/P (Mike) on  G/CE-002. I also managed to hold QSO's with nine of our own club members from TDARS (Telford and District Amateur Society). I had received a few not so good signal reports from this summit and found out why as I packed away my gear, one of the crocodile clips on my antenna feed point had nearly broken through. I had not taken any tools with me on this trip (bad mistake). I was going to have to activate my last two summits using the handhelds little rubber duck aerial.

Fourth Summit.

G/WB-003 Stiperstones. 12th January 2019.

Altitude 536M. Grid SO 367986.

A quick 10 minutes drive from Corndon Hill and I had arrived at my car park grid SO 36938 97692. The car park was nearly full, a lot of walkers out on this summit. A quick walk up from the car park to the summit and I was there in 15 minutes. As I said before no yagi for this activation so I was calling CQ Sota in less than a minute. My first chaser was G0UFE.M (Simon) from our club (TDARS), followed quickly over the next 6 minutes another 8 QSO's (7 TDARS) and M1CNL (Peter) in Tamworth.

Fifth and final Summit.

G/WB-005 Long Mynd Pole Bank. 12th January 2019.

Altitude 516M. Grid SO 415944.

I arrived at my car park grid SO 42083 95327 at 13:57 p.m. and had a little 10 minute walk up to the summit trig point. Again a lot of walkers on the summit but they all said hello as you passed them. I think by this point I was a good 1 1/2 hours in front of my alerted times on Sotawatch. I gave a CQ Sota call out again and M0KZB (Eric) (TDARS Chairman) was the first to come back to me followed up quickly by 9 others including 4 more (TDARS members). The last summit was activated and finished in 8 minutes.

I had managed to complete the Famous 5 as they are sometimes referred to in 5 hours 28 minutes from arriving at the first car park and holding my last QSO. I know its not a race but I like to keep my eye on my timings.

The over all results are as follows:
Miles driven = 95.7
miles walked = 6.4
steps taken = 13,215
QSO's = 51
S2S = 6

This was a very good day and with the winter bonus points I claimed 25 points towards the final goal of SOTA Mountain Goat. Thank you to all of the S2S's and the chasers and I hope to catch you soon on another summit.

5th January 2019. SOTA Activation of GW/MW-001.

GW/MW-001 Plynlimon-Pen Pumlumon Fawr. 5th January 2019.

Altitude 752M. Grid SN 789869.

Today was time for a new unique summit. I had decided to visit Plynlimon-Pen in Mid Wales. I left home at 05:50 a.m. and as usual of late headed towards Shrewsbury on the A5. I was supposed to turn left on to the A458 towards Welshpool, I was on my 2M rig talking away with G0OHY (Arthur) and then realised I was nearly in Oswestry. A little detour that added about 10 - 15 minutes on to my journey, lesson learnt follow the SatNav.

I eventually arrived at the car park Grid SN 79793 84071. Which is the one that GW4VPX (Allan) used just before Christmas. Yes it is still £5, my first time here so I didn't know which Bungalow I was to pay and it was 07:50 a.m. and everywhere was in darkness, so I left a note on my windscreen saying I will pay on my return. Which I did, in the light I could see the honesty box, so left my money there.

I made my ascent up the green route and because of the cloud cover made my descent down the red route so I could follow the fence line. My ascent took me exactly one hour with only two or three small stops for photos, this was maybe a little too fast as I was a little out of breath once I arrived at the summit.
The summit was covered with cloud and ice patch's here and there. I decided to set up my 6m mast attached to the trig point with bungees and my guy ropes. I set up the Sotabeams linked dipole (40/30/20 M) and my homebrew 2 M yagi.
I then realised there was no 3G or 4G so I could not spot myself. I started calling CQ Sota on 30M and was answered after about 3 or 4 attempts by SA4BLM (Lars) in Sweden, followed by IK2LEY  (Fabio) in Italy. At this time a couple of other stations started to use the frequency and this made my activation very hard as they where both 599 to me and I then struggled to make my next contact which was DJ2MX (Mario). All I can say is really sorry it took so long Mario but every time you tried the other two stations were over powering. My Morse is still a little weak for a pile up really sorry.

The map below shows my CW and 2M SSB DX contacts.
The activation was going slow until a friend of mine G0OOQ (Sean) informed me there was a lift of 2M. So I turned my homebrew 2M yagi horizontal and tuned around the 144 Mhz on USB. To my surprise the first person logged was F1RAF (Nicolas) followed by a further 3 more France stations, 1 Spain, 1 Ireland and 1 Scotland.

I managed to log 4 S2S's with MW0XOT/P (John GW/MW-004), MW0XRT/P (David GW/NW-046), GW4TJC/P (Simon GW/NW-019) and MW0ZAQ/P (Chas GW/NW-053). Thank you to all of the activators and chasers for making it a good day.
After three hours I was starting to get cold so I pulled the plug at 12:15 p.m. packed up and started my descent, as stated above the cloud cover was getting worse I decided to follow the fence line down this took about 55 minutes.