19th April 2019. SOTA Activation's of GW/NW-040, 039 & 035.

Today's first SOTA Activation.

GW/NW-040. 19th April 2019.

Altitude 610 M. Grid SH 729726.

This is my third visit to Tal y Fan, this is a summit near Conwy North Wales. I had planned on activating three summits today and all are four point activation's. I left home at 05.45 a.m. and headed towards Wales on the A5. I had planned on going past Wrexham and going to Conwy on the A55, I know this is about 20 miles further to travel but the road is a lot faster.
I parked my car at Grid SH 73173 71472 at 07.52 a.m. This is the same spot I have used on all three previous activation's and I think it is the best spot.

The weather was fantastic and this was the first summit that I have done in a long time without having to wear a jacket to walk up. This was going to be a fast activation as I had plenty of driving ahead of me. I managed to hold 6 QSO's including M0TBQ (Don) from my own club TDARS.

My second SOTA Activation.

GW/NW-035. 19th April 2019.

Altitude 661 M. Grid SH 724446.

I managed to get back to my car for 09.13 a.m. and started the 1 hour 10 minute drive to

Grid  SH 73265 4560 the car park for the Quarry at Manod Mawr. The walk up again was a hot one so no jacket again, this took me about 30 minutes after a few stops for photo's.

This is a steady climb, a little steep to start with but easier about half way up to the summit. You have to watch your footing as you approach the summit as there are a lot of rocks as seen on the photo above.
I set up my gear and turned on my hand held to hear MW1HAX/P (Richard) on GW/NW-001 so a quick shout of summit to summit and my first QSO was complete with a nice contact to Snowdon. This was followed by a further 6 QSO's including another S2S with M0NOM/P (Mark) on G/LD-017. I had finished all within 21 minutes and was packing up ready to start my descent and head to my last summit of the day.

My third and final SOTA Activation.

GW/NW-039. 19th April 2019.

Altitude 611 M. Grid SH 953422.

I arrived at Grid SH 96228 43434 where I have parked my car on the last three activation's of this summit, I started my ascent at 12.54 p.m. and arrived at the summit at 13.24 p.m. I had already decided this was going to be my play time for radio's so I set up my Sotabeams linked dipole. This was for 20/30/40 M but after my activation with Allan GW4VPX I had decided to add 60M as well. This was a quick add on that I managed to carry out last weekend. So after 7 QSO's on 2M including a S2S with G1TLQ/P (Steve) on G/LD-005, I decided to start my HF activation of 5.403.5 Mhz. My first QSO was with G7LMF (Graham) followed by a further 7 QSO's. I was happy my add on was working well. I then had a quick play on 20M and managed a further 3 QSO's.

This was taken from my phone just as I returned to my car after all walking was completed. Then add the 220 miles of driving and by the time I returned home 11 and a half hours, I think a day worth spending on the summits. I enjoyed it and adding the 12 points to my Sota database records.

30th March 2019. SOTA Activation G/SP-002.

Today's SOTA Activation.

G/SP-002. 30th March 2019.

Altitude 582 M. Grid SE 076045.

My first activation of  Black Hill in the Peak District, this was a weekend away for Michelle (my XYL) and myself. We stayed in Halifax to have a break away and I persuaded Michelle to let me activate a summit.
We left the hotel after breakfast at 9 a.m and first of all headed into Halifax to pick up a few essentials, then headed south to Grid SE 0767507264 this was our appointed car park for the day. The walk up to the summit was 1.44 miles and took us 54 minutes as Michelle is not an experienced walker so we took it easy.

The activation was not the best for quantity of QSO's but I did manage two S2S's. G3TQQ/P (Dave) and G4OOE/P (Nick) were both on G/NP-006 and MW3TMX/P ( Jordan) was on GW/NW-013. The weather was fantastic and it made for a good day out. There were plenty of walkers and nearly everyone stopped to ask the usual questions like what are you doing and how far have you managed to talk to.