GW SOTA Trip

I’ll tell them to look out for you.

I’ve actually got the four summit challenge pencilled in for 22nd May not 21st, all other things permitting.

Mick M0XMC

Only 3 weeks now until we are in Snowdonia to activate the SOTA summits on my post above. This is all subject to change depending on weather. We hope to work most of you and hopefully a lot of you will be monitoring 2m FM on the day we activate GW/NW-006, GW/NW-003, GW/NW-004 and GW/NW-005 as we will only the taking 2m FM hand held and rubber duck. We need to qualify these summit quickly on 2m FM in order to successfully activate all 4 of these summits in one day.

Jimmy M0HGY

Yikes, these days are ticking over very quickly - and I haven’t even got a car! Mr dear old Citroen is finally being laid to rest (or sold for scrap / spares / banger racing / “an ambitious project”) and I’m holding off booking a rental vehicle as long as possible in the hope I might have a set of wheels of my own by Friday.

Anyway, unless we get a ridiculous stroke of luck like we got in GI at Whit, the British weather may have a reet good go at disrupting our Snowdonia plans. We’ll try to keep the alerts up-to-date whenever we can get hold of Wi-Fi or mobile data coverage, but things could be fast-changing, and sometimes without the facility to advise other than over the air.

Some locals have kindly offered us a taxi service to help with the planned linear walks, while some have promised to monitor 2m FM, especially on the expedition on the Glyders where we hope to activate four >3000 feet in one day. Being able to qualify the activations using only handhelds will be optimal on this expedition.

We’ll see how kind and cooperative the weather decides to be, but whatever happens, it’s still a 5 day holiday in a youth hostel in Snowdonia, and even one new unique activated is better than none! Anything more is a bonus :wink:

3 would be nice - as that would allow us to overtake CWI in the G Activator uniques table. Even if we get them all done, we will still be short of 400 uniques and still some way short of activating all of GW. Looking forward to the trip!

Well today was forecast to be the best day of the week even on the most recent Snowdonia mountain forecast at the YHA this morning. However it is definitely the worst. It may clear later but not in time for a sensible attempt on the originally intended Y Garn and Elidir Fawr.

Instead we are being cheeky boys today and riding up Snowdon on the train. The amended alert time will be pretty accurate but we’ll only have about 10 minutes for us both to get our 4 contacts, so speedy operatingwould be appreciated.

Not our preferred MO but perfectly within the rules and better than sitting around doing nowt. IIRC the station is right on the AZ limit but we will climb the 80 feet or so to the actual summit.

Trust that you enjoyed the train ride - presumably you are traveling back down as well, so will miss out on the triple “high” of radio, walking and trains. :wink:

I was loitering with intent the other day hoping you’d pop up on 40m CW from Moelwyn Mawr GW/NW-016, but it wasn’t to be. Oh well, maybe catch that one another time.

73, Gerald G4OIG

My thanks to Tom & Jimmy for the Snowdon contacts this morning, I’ve been trying to chase that one for a while now without success, it was my longest 2m chase to date from my home QTH, ( 81.3 miles ) so I’m very happy with that.

Cheers Guys, keep it up.

Neil

Ha ha no problem Neil. Thanks for listening and calling in. In fact thanks to all the chasers for being there in numbers and operating quickly and considerately.

We made 24 contacts between us in our ten minutes on summit and successfully caught our return train. The persistent driving rain was just as bad at 1085m as it was at 310m so we made a good judgement call to radically alter our plans.

Even this morning the latest Snowdonia mountain forecast was favourable. But M0HGY tends to keep a vigilant and critical eye om these things and he called it right today for sure.

Gerald, since the first one NW002 I’ve only carried VX7 and SOTAbeams rucksack special antenna. I might do some HF this afternoon if the wx cheers up.

Tom, Jimmy. Many thanks for QSO’s this morning. You are doing great. It was a very nice surprise to meet you both on the radio today. I did not expect any activations in this weather. Best wishes to you both. 73 de Paul.

Looks like I will have to go out portable to work the UK summits I need for Completes. Maybe I should put the BNOS 180w linear into the car. :wink:

Nothing heard from NW-071 this afternoon. Oh, don’t you just love HF… :frowning: Just as well I didn’t need that one otherwise I might have just had to go out and activate a summit!

Just to note that I’m planning to join Tom and Jimmy tomorrow, subject to WX, doing Moel Eilio, GW/NW-022 and then Moel Cynghorion, GW/NW-030. Bands are to-be-decided. Maybe I’ll do some HF or maybe try 70cm.

Simon

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Reports etc for this trip will be done - when I get around to them.

Meanwhile, Simon G4TJC has posted a blog entry about our joint activation of GW/NW-022 and GW/NW-030 on our last day in Snowdonia.

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First couple of reports / photos published:

GW/NW-002 Carnedd Llewelyn
GW/NW-006 Glyder Fawr

http://tomread.co.uk → click on ‘SOTA’ on the left.

GW/NW-003 Glyder Fawr

Report and photos now available on http://tomread.co.uk

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All the reports and photos for the August GW SOTA Trip are now available.

http://tomread.co.uk

Click on “SOTA” on the left menu.

Then select Carnedd Llewelyn NW-002. Then each subsequent activation of the trip is linked at the end of each report.

The new pages added are:

GW/NW-016 Moelwyn Mawr
GW/NW-026 Mynydd Mawr
GW/NW-001 Snowdon
GW/NW-071 Mynydd Bodafon
GW/NW-022 Moel Eilio
GW/NW-030 Moel Cynghorion
GW/NW-070 Great Orme

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Tenerife summits coming next.