Ardnamurchan & Morven reports

The view from my table in the pub as I had a quiet pint this evening:

Report details to follow but Creach Bheinn WS-150 is the primary target for Tuesday.

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Morning Andy
I hope the beer was as tasty as the photo…
Cheers Ken G0FEX

Nice photo Andy - hope that wasn’t accompanied by midges. Good to work you on GM/WS-150 today. I could hear you in the noise on SSB, but you were riding high on CW courtesy of the 300Hz filter in the FT-857D. I trust that you enjoyed the chocolate during your activation - it didn’t affect your keying. :thumbsup:

Hopefully catch you in the coming days, work commitments permitting. I decided it was time to retire, but since then the work has been flooding in. C’est la vie.

73, Gerald G4OIG

Midges were terrible… I’ll be Smidge’d up for tonight. However, the suffering w!s worth it, still 18C at 900pm and the beer was cold, really cold. Belhaven Pilsner 4.9%, very nice. I shall have to do extended quality control testing later!

Well I can’t eat chocolate unless I have done some suitable exercise to get the pancreas working so I can get rid of the sugar. It took 3h25 to climb 850m and walk 5.8km. The ground was horrible so wet I needed flippers and a snorkel in parts. But the views… oh sweet lord above, the views were beyond belief.

I’d upload some pictures but somebody forgot the SDcard adapter. This W10 convertible tablet takes micro SD cards. The camera takes full size cards. I have an 8GB micro SD in an adapter in the camera normally but for reasons I can’t explain I put a full size 8gb card in this time. The little USB doodah takes a card and makes it look like a USB memory stick. But it’s at home not in the PC holiday bag. Drat! The photo of the sunset was my cheap BY-land phone in HDR mode and Bluetoothed to the PC.

Well if the lack of an SD card adapter is the only equipment “failure” that you have this week, then I am sure it will be a good one.Totally jealous here of course, slaving over a hot 4.2GHz quad core with Clients asking complicated questions about projects seemingly just because I can answer them appropriately. I suppose that is my version of midges for the week!

Will keep an ear out for you. Enjoy those views. :grin::

73, Gerald G4OIG

I’ve brought spares where I have them. As I said to Vicki M6BWA, you don’t want to come all this way and then be spoilt because something broke when you could have had a replacement with you.

Tomorrow I’m heading down the peninsula towards Ardnamuchan Point and the targets are Beinn na Seilg (Ben-na-shellack) and Ben Hiant (I don’t know the correct way to say that, it’s Norse not Gaelic.)

Epic photo Andy !

Epic, that’s a good word! Epic is how I would describe how lacking in go my legs were this morning. Creach Bheinn yesterday was the first serious walk I’ve done in a year since slipping a disc in my back. Sure I’ve done lots of summits but all of them were trivial TBH. So today I got up and felt fine. But when I engaged low gear on the summit there was nothing there. Well my thighs complained a lot so I was very slow up the hill. Lack of exertion at a higher level is one reason and also it was 25C+ yesterday and dehydration is a problem.

The result was do one summit well (60/30/30/20/2m) or rush it and the struggle up the next and then find I cannot do anything tomorrow. So apologies for not managing to put Beinn na Seilg on the air. Ben Hiant has amazing views so I enjoyed my long time there followed by a blast across the volcano remains to Sanna. Wow! Only problem, no suncreme on my cheeks so I’m a bit “lobster” in the face. I didn’t think it was that sunny, my face disagrees!

I activated Morven this arvo, does this allow me airtime on this thread? :grin::grin:
Seriously, a great summit with lots of wildlife, 2 adders spotted, many slow worms and about 8 billion flying ants that managed to get into my mouth whilst calling cq. Anyway the band’s were rubbish. 40m hard work, but those I worked were good signals. Maybe all at work or watching tv. 20m signals down, but did log KG3W & VE1WT. Glad I booked the 8pm sitting for dinner in the hotel, only just made it !! Hope decent wx tomorrow.

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I’ve still to do that summit Steve. Plenty of adders reported by my walking colleagues at work. 40m was hard work butt better than 60m. ODX for me was KA1R on 20m cw. Hazy today, Rum kept disappearing into the murk. WX should be OK tomorrow here, maybe misty your side of the country.

I’ve never known 60 and 40 to be in such poor shape - never! Not a sausage from Andy on any band, I’m suffering from a surfeit of white noise…

Brian

Good morning Andy,

Sounds like your enjoying your sojourns with good wx to boot - hi! I wonder what is planned for today?

Missed you yesterday on 60M by 10 mins and there was no skip to my QTH on 40M :confused:. I think you heard me chatting to Rob YTS on Ben Lomond, but you were just too weak from your portable.

Maybe catch you today?

Keep safe es 73

Jack(;>J

It’s cloudy, cooler but looking OK today. With legs willing, I’m aiming for Beinn nam Beathrach (has a trig) and Beinn Chlaoleud today.

Andy, it appears that you have successfully passed any gremlins residing in your kit over to me. Heard you on Ben Hiant about the same strength as the day previous, but when I went to transmit, cue a fault on the LDF-250. This took time to trace and by the time I had changed over to an alternative feeder you had moved up in frequency. Oh well, these things happen.

Hope you have an enjoyable day today. The weather is breaking down, but you may be clear until the weekend.

73, Gerald G4OIG

EDIT: looking at your log, I see that you didn’t actually work anyone on 7MHz CW from Ben Hiant. That is probably why I had the problem - all the power of your jinx fell on me alone!

OK just got to top of Beinn Chlaonleud. Knackered now. 1547bst… Will be qrv 2m and 60m in 10mins.

Brilliant! Conditions not good this late in the day with skip longer than I had hoped for, but pulled you out my high noise level using the DSP. No more gremlins… until tomorrow!

Thanks for Beinn Chlaonleud GM/WS-305 and well done on the two today I was earning a crust this morning, so was not able to be around for Beinn nam Beathrach GM/WS-274.

73, Gerald G4OIG

TNX fer WS-308 on 40M CW. I am only a few miles away in Fort William yet you were only 519.
Have also been calling you on 2M

73
Dave
GM4NFI

I wondered where you were located Dave. Strange the signal being poor. Sorry didn’t hear you on 2m. I put 2m on mainly so Robin GM7PKT could complete some summits on VHF. I didn’t realise just how long he had been waiting till our QSO today. 12years for Creach Bheinn and 14years for Ben Hinat! For my troubles I worked Seamus MM0CWJ/p on S. Uist for a S2S :grin:

Anyway what started as a cloudy day turned into something brilliant instead, very sunny and very hot out the breeze. A lot of the haze has now gone.

I have discovered the secret, drink lots (L O T S) of water, 3L worth. Oh and I had 3 cans of (diet) Red Bull after parking for Beinn Chloanleud!

Is that within the spirit of the rules? - assisted ascent using wings. ;-).

I usually reserve the Red Bull for the looooooooong drive home from GM. Must try it if is helpful on the hills.As for 3 litres of water, does Anquet allow for the associated stops?

Hopefully catch you tomorrow if you are out again.

73, Gerald G4OIG

I normally use it for my drives home too. But the heat today meant I required extra help. So 225 mg of caffeine in one hit did the business!