Saturday 9 February 2019

9th February 2019. SOTA Activation GW/MW-002 & 010.

First Summit of the day.
GW/MW-002. 9th February 2019.
Altitude 660 M. Grid SO 182638.

Another 6 a.m. start heading south for a change. Today I was activating two of the Mid Wales summits but these are both to the south of Telford. I arrived at my first car park grid SO 15715 65556
at 07.22 a.m. Sorted out my gear and started the 2.79 mile walk, I have added my GPS tracked route below. It was already very windy and that was at the car park altitude 440 meters.

I was a little surprised when I saw there was still snow on my ascent. I managed to arrive at the trig point for 08.28 a.m. Set up my gear ready for 2M FM and made my first QSO at 08.38 a.m. with G7LMF (Graham) followed directly by G6DFD (Mike) and G0OOQ (Sean). G0HCT (Brian) was also there but we didn't manage to make a good contact. After these quick few QSO's the band was dead and it took another 33 minutes to get my fourth QSO and finally qualify the summit with G3UKV (Martyn).
There was another TDARS member trying to contact me but it was not happening on FM so his good idea was to try SSB. Which we did and gave each other 5/5 & 5/8 G3JKX (Mike), this was followed by G3UKV also giving and receiving a better report than we did on FM.
This is the short video I managed to make of some of the journey.




Second Summit of the day.
GW/MW-010. 9th February 2019.
Altitude 542 M. Grid SO 158555.

I arrived at my car parking grid of SO 15119 57200. at 10.49 a.m. about 30 minutes behind schedule because of the problems I had qualifying Great Rhos. I had read that the farmer likes to be asked to have your car parked there so I started knocking on the doors. After 5 minutes I decided that there was no one around, so I left a polite message in my windscreen with my name and phone number if required.

This ascent reminded me of the Wrekin a relatively short walk but up hill all the way. I managed to reach the trig point at 11.19 a.m. and yet again it was very windy, this was going to be hard going and I decided not to even try to erect my mast for HF.
I was just about to start calling CQ Sota and my phone rang, it was G3UKV (Martyn), we are waiting on 20M for you Paul he said. I explained about the bad wind conditions and Martyn and Mike (G3JKX) both came on 2M SSB and we had good 5/7s and 5/8s. We had a quick chat and then I went back to calling CQ SOTA. To my disappointment no one came back, this was going to be a hard shell to crack. It was another 15 minutes of calling before I managed to log G8TPM (Nigel) followed by G8UKV (Maz). Summit qualified in the end I was happy even though a little disappointed at not being able to activate HF.

A quick video to show the summit conditions.

 

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