I would like to thank all 21 stations that worked me on my on first, completely un-planned activation of SP-005 Pendle Hill.
The only reason I was in the vicinity was that I had heard Rick M0RCP was on his way to activate Pendle Hill, after activating Wards Stone earlier that afternoon. Always having for many years been one who does things at a whim, & having worked Rick many times on various summits, the weather looked quite nice for a ride on my motorbike, so I chose to head for the parking spot I would choose if I was to climb Pendle.
There were several cars there when I arrived & I called Mick M0PVA on 145.500 to see if there was any update on Rick’s progress, but there was no reply (hardly surprising given the huge lump of hill in between us HI)
Rather than hang around on the road, I made my way up a farm track at a very leisurely pace while monitoring S20 & stopping occasionally to check 144.300.
I reached the farm, & Pendle loomed large before me, go on I thought, I’ll carry on to the the first gate. The first gate arrived & the muddy path up the hill beckoned. Being totally unplanned I was wearing my work boots, motorbike leather, jeans & carrying a 2 litre bottle of diet coke & 14 bags of Hula Hoops, along with the other assorted bit’s & pieces & I keep in my rucksack for work or other situations that may arise with my motorbike. Added to this was my motorcycle helmet & an FT290R in a waterproof bag that fortunately had handles. Probably a bit top heavy with non-radio gear!!!
For any that think it may have been unwise, I do know Pendle Hill very well, was better equiped than many I saw coming down the hill, & could find my way down in the dark if I had to.
Before this tale becomes a saga, I’ll move swiftly on…
Once I was 3/4 of the way up & with time moving on I had to decide whether to continue to the summit, or turn back with Health & Safety in mind. After some deliberation, a nice excuse for a breather I continued on. Throughout my ascent I had been alone in giong up the hill, though I did see many others coming down.
Once at the point where the long, gently??? sloping path from Barley reached the firt edge of the summit plain I knew I had to go on, if only for myself as it is many years since I last scaled any sizeable hill.
It was a fairly gentle stroll uphill from there but such a relief when the trig point finally came into view
I took the FT290 out of it’s case & listened on S20, shortly after powering up the rig I heard Scott 2E0RCS calling his better half Janine 2E0JAD, & as I know them quite well I broke in to say hello as G0VOF/M. We were soon joined by Wayne 2E0BFN, another station local to my home QTH of Blackburn & before he moved to the other side of town we could have worked on dummy loads HI.
Having no pen or paper, logging contacts in a conventional manner was out of the question but my mobile phone has the facility to record low quality video (as most do these days) so I decided to give it a go using the recorded audio to transcribe my log when back home. I Tried to ensure that any neccessary transfer of information for QSO’s to be valid was duly passed. You may hear me giving a timecheck as I moved to S20, which I have used to calculate the times of the QSO’s which I will enter in my log.
Maybe I was being a little paranoid about the performance of my phone as an audio recorder, the recording came out much better than I could have ever have expected given the wind at the summit
My only dissappointment was not meeting or working Rick M0RCP. Looking at the times logged he must have been set up ready to go whan I finally went QRT. It was going dark & by that time the top 1/4 of the hill was in cloud with very limited visibility. I was located about 20 feet horizontaly from the trig point on the Nelson / Burnley side at SD80504142.
Now I have to get what I have on my paper log into the database, which I will endeavour to do as soon as I can.
For anybody interested, I have put the recording I made to transcribe my log from available as a Windows media audio file online at : http://www.dogswebspace.com/g0vof_first_sota_summit.wma
Thank you to M3TMX for the spot, sorry I didn’t acknowledge you sooner, & of course once again, thank you very much to all stations for the QSO’s
I was completely overwhelmed!
So now I know I can do it, I’ve got to have a go at multiband HF / VHF next, preferably in daylight HI.
Sorry for any spelling mistakes in this post, once got home I thought I deserved a Beer
73
Mark G0VOF