15th December 2018. GW/NW-035 SOTA Activation visit.

GW/NW-035 15th December 2018.

Grid SH 724447. Altitude 661M.

My second visit to Manod Mawr near the village of Ffestiniog North Wales. I left my home in Telford at 06:00 a.m. and headed west down the A5 towards Shrewsbury and Wales. I arrived at the car park location at grid SH 73269 45601 at 08:15 a.m. It had turned light at 07.50 a.m. so I could see what I was doing. I got my gear ready and started my ascent.

As seen from the photos above you can see that it didn't look to good up there on the summit. I managed to get to the summit by 08.43 a.m.and started to set up my SOTA Beams linked dipole. I was going to try another CW activation. This didn't go as planned and after spotting myself and calling CQ for about 10 - 15 minutes on 20m and no calls logged I decided to try 40m. Again spotting myself and this time I decided to try SSB. I managed to log 3 QSO's in a 5 or 6 minute run then again it all went down hill.

The weather was getting worse all the time and the temperature was not the best (about -4 wind chill).
After another 30 minutes of no contacts I decided to try my luck at CW again, this time I was going to try 30m. I stopped myself and to my astonishment I had 3 QSO's in the next 8 minutes. I am very sorry to the others I could hear trying to get back to me but at that stage I could not feel my hands let alone my fingers. I told myself enough is enough and I needed to pack up and head back to the car.

As seen from the photo's above I had a little surprise when I went to my mast? OMG it was frozen solid. This was not good as I had no feelings in my fingers, so I struggled to pack the gear away, then it dawned on me why G0UFE (Simon) and M0JZH (John) call me crazy horse lol.

Thank you to all that managed to hold a QSO and those that tried. If it wasn't for the Chasers we could not qualify the summit.