In the last week, I’ve driven around the UK with my daughter looking at universities and have been lucky enough to activate peaks in Scotland and Wales along the way. Tomorrow morning, we will visit the University of Exeter and then head back towards London. It looks like G/DC-005, Christ Cross, is more or less along the way and does not appear to be technically challenging, so I would like to fit it into the itinerary, probably around or a bit after noon local time.
I will start with VHF. I have an after-market whip antenna for 2m and 70m, but nothing directional. Digging through my luggage, I also discovered the rubber duck antenna that comes with the FT817. That antenna gets poor reviews, but it works so-so on 6m. According to the database, this peak has never been worked on 6m, so I’ll give it a try. My preferred mode is CW and I will give that a try although I anticipate that it will be awkward trying to support the radio vertically, while using my palm paddles magnetically attached to the case of the radio. I’ll manage. I will also try on voice. Hopefully, I will be able to self-spot.
If I have four calls logged and we are pressed, I may continue back to London, but if we have time I would like to set up a telescoping mast and run up the 40/20/10m end-fed antenna, again on cw and voice.
Hope someone hears me. I would like to be able to say that I activated MM/, MW/, and M/ all in one trip.
Christ Cross G/DC-005 is a drive-on summit. There’s a couple of areas on the road where it’s wide enough to park a vehicle. Both times I’ve activated the summit, I’ve operated from the hedge at the side of the road!
Can’t give any indication as to the likelihood of qualifying on VHF, as I used HF CW. I even worked Stateside from there on 20m with my MTR.
Hi All - Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I did activate the summit earlier today. As mentioned, this was quick diversion on the drive from Exeter to London on a pretty tight schedule. I agree with G1INK - this is not a challenging peak to work and for me it did fulfill the desire to check the box of having worked SOTA sites in Scotland, Wales, and England during the same one week road trip. I don’t see any problem reactivating peaks, though, as long as people have fun doing it (the other 53 repeat activators presumably agree).
As for the activation: I parked on the verge, trudged down a muddy road, looked at the actual peak and concluded that I’d be better off operating from the side of the road near the entrance to the field. I managed to get five contacts on 2m (three FM, two SSB). As much as I would have liked to add the first 6m contact, I heard nothing on 6M - I tried calling on both FM and by CW. That box remains to be ticked, but probably not by me.
Having my four contacts plus one (and a mildly bored teenager dutifully logging), I decided to call it a day and continue the trip back to London.
Steve, I find your comment a little bit out of place. Are you having a little dig because I’ve activated DC-005 more than once?
SOTA qualifying summits are listed due to their prominence, not their attractiveness.
I happen to have family in the area whom I visit a few times a year, I’m not going to sniff at a chance of another activator point per year just because the convenient summit is not an attractive one. I wouldn’t make a special trip over many miles to activate that summit, but sometimes a convenient time window opens up and I’m up for grabbing as many activator points as I can on my quest for Mountain Goat.
I’m due back in Devon very shortly, who knows, I might active G/DC-005 again if I’m too short on time to do G/DC-001.
Hmmm, that gives me an idea - I could call in en route to my daughter’s in Cornwall and use my “B” call and try to qualify it on 70cm. Quite a reasonable view up the valley - pleasant enough on a warm sunny day in my book.
