Today I decided to go out and activate a summit, and as the weather was good I decided on a trip to Llandudno to activate The Great Orme (GW/NW/-070). Grabbed my note book and pen and a Baofeng GT3 MK2.
Go there about 11:30am and after some sandwiches I walked to a good spot and began calling CQ for SOTA…
After a few minutes I got a call… a summit to summit… the same summit! from MW1BBV - Bob and G7MRV - Martin both operating HF
As I rushed out I didnt check if anyone was activating The Great Orme. But that wasn’t my only problem!
Upon being spotted on SOtawatch, my battery decided it didnt want to work any longer!
So I decided to wonder over to Bob and Martin to say thanks for the spot…
Oh well its propably the first summit to summit where you can see each other!
Hello Dominic,
Well at least you had a nice day, met some fellow activators and had a reminder about checking batteries
Take care and have a good weekend.
Night night.
Mike
Sorry to hear about your problem. I saw your spot come up as I was on my way up to Rhinog Fawr GW/NW-023 with a great take off to towards your summit and a quick listen brought silence. Put the failure behind you and learn from the experience and I hope to work you summit to summit in the very near future.
Great Orme is a brilliant summit. However, the 2m band is not so easy from there, with a handheld. The coms tower will give you plenty of grief on VHF. If you can get hold of/borrow/beg, a decent well filterd 2m rig, you will have little problem qualifying it on 2m.
The HF take-off from Great Orme is outstanding, so if you can sort out a joint activation with someone who has a decent HF set-up, you’ll have a lot of fun up there.
Well at least it was a nice day! And it was great to meet you - first time we’ve met another activator on a summit! You’ll quickly learn from it and your next activation im sure will run well. We’ve all been there! I once dragged an FT-857 and a 7Ah SLAB up Ben Donich and made only 3 contacts!
Ive lost count of the times ive forgotton logbooks, pens, batteries, connectors etc!
And contrast wednesday on Great Orme to mine and Bobs activation of Snowdon yesterday! -5 degree windchill, gale force winds in the face the whole way up, operating in the freezing cold above the cloudbase at summit, and having to fight to get four contacts! We didnt take HF up as the weather we knew wasnt good for an exposed HF rig, so had to rely on 2m. But even then we got a S2S! He was about 30 miles away (NW-049?) and in glorious sunshine!!!
Im also sat here covered in Calamine due to the hundreds of flipping midges at Llanberis!
GM Martin
I was amazed at the conditions you faced on Snowdon yesterday.
although the wind was very strong on Gryn Moelfre, NW-049, i was able to find a sheltered spot just below the summit
and was basking in warm sunshine !!.
The wind caused me to give up on HF as i could not keep the mast upright, apart from that is was an excellent day
on a new summit for me , with fantastic views.
Many thanks for the S2S
So were we Neil! Up until wednesday evening our forecast looked really good - I was planning some nice T-shirt walking to top up my tan!
Luckily it didnt actually rain! But the winds was awful. And being inside the cloud meant everything was wet anyway, but it was the windchill factor that was worst!
It was Bob you actually worked, but I heard you call on S20 - it was me who shouted to you to ‘QSY 550 for summit to summit’! so Bob could get you!
