Walked to the Jubilee Tower Moel Famau NW-044 in low cloud.
Since I bought my net book Samsung NC10 a year ago I’ve been
waiting for the chance to try it out for logging during an activation.
This model boasts up around 6 to 7 hours battery time on a full charge.
On my return home it was registering about 63% battery power left
remaining after the two hours it was used.
Considering the temperature was hovering around zero this was not
too bad. The net book showed no signs of slowing down or
being slow to update each call sign. I was using HRD for logging.
A call on 60m produced G0HNW and then a steady run of callers,
all very good signals. I was using my K2 with about 10 watts
and my 66’ doublet.
It was quite novel using the net book for logging, it worked well,
although I occasionally caught the wrong key.
After the contacts dried up on 60m I QSY’d to 30m. Now for
the last few years of SOTA I have preferred 30m over 40m,
the reason being that there is usually a huge pile up on 40m which
tests my CW skills (or lack of) to its limit and I usually keep
my activations relatively short.
30m on the other hand had always been a bit more relaxed with just a steady run of callers.
Well, not this time! I experienced my biggest SOTA pile up yet.
I wish to apologise to the callers for the many repeats I asked
for, the volume of callers was amazing, all at very
good signal strength. With cold fingers and quite a gap since working
a pile up I was struggling to keep up.
After a while a walker came up and started asking questions about
what I was doing so I had to QRT quick. Again, my apologies
for those that were still calling but I didn’t want to be rude to
the walker who seemed quite interested in amateur radio.
On my return to the frequency, it was clear. So I gave a quick
call on 10m SSB. The only response was from my good friend
John MW1FGQ.
Looking at my watch I realised that I had over run my stay.
Richard G3CWI had phoned me earlier to say that he would
meet up with me at the car park and join me for the walk up
Foel Fenlli. That and the promise that I made to my wife that I’d
be back in time for lunchtime for her to go to the shops speeded up my descent considerably!
After meeting up with Richard at the car park it was a quick and
easy ascent to the summit of Foel Fenlli. Surprisingly, there was
more snow on the way up than Moel Famau.
This time I stuck to 2m. I tried 70cm but could not raise anybody
on my handie.
Richard was also on 2m/70cm and it was then that we noticed a
loud ticking/QRN from his FT817. It was my note book, I too
noticed some QRN on my TH-F7E. I had no interference on my
K2 (HF). We didn’t try HF on the FT817 as we didn’t have an aerial
with us.
After a few contacts we made our way down. There is a
considerable amount of path building on Foel Fenlli below the summit.
Thanks to Richard for joining me on Foel Fenlli. I was very pleased
with the NC10 for logging, but I’d only use it for the smaller
summits. I must improve my pile up skills before my next outing,
perhaps using split would have been better, but in the cold weather
and frantic logging, I didn’t think of it at the time.
Nice to work some new stations as well as many long standing SOTA friends.
I’ve posted a video on youtubes.
Thanks to all the callers, my apologies for those I missed.
73
Roger MW0IDX