Friday 11th May 2018 - The Cloud G/SP-015
I had a little time in-between dropping Liam off for his hospital volunteering, and meeting him again for lunch - or so I thought! Time to activate The Cloud!
Looking at the time I reckoned I had available, I was tempted to take a longer walk maybe starting and finishing at Timbersbrook in order to boost the weight loss mission currently in operation. However, I decided to devote the extra time to setting up the SOTAbeams MFD, thus allowing me to get out better on 2m C4FM.
I was able to access SOTA-LINK easily via MB6AH and chatted to a couple of people on here first. As I was about to switch to C4FM simplex, I had a call from Liam to say that there was a buildings problem at the ward he was working on, and therefore the volunteers were being sent away.
Fortunately, I got four C4FM QSOs in short order, then descended and went to meet Liam in Subway.
Friday 11th May 2018 - Gun G/SP-013
After a “fiery tuna” sandwich each, and a beard trim each (not at the same establishment), Liam and I made our way to the other side of town. He’d planned an afternoon socialising with his friends at Art Space. Again, I took the opportunity to bag a local SOTA activation while he was doing so.
I went to Gun, and this time took the decision to carry just the handheld, but take a longer walk. This meant walking back down the road until diverting right across a farmer’s field, on a PROW. This linked to a narrow back road (cul-de-sac) that climbs the north shoulder of Gun Hill. A public footpath then leads off to the right and climbs gently to the trig point. This is a very pleasant short route, shown to me by Richard G3CWI a few years ago.
On the first part of the walk, I accessed WIRES-X on G3CWI’s new Macclesfield node MB6SO - and changed the room to CQ-UK. This resulted in a chat with an op in Halifax.
Later on the ascent, I was working into Fusion repeater GB3LH (Lichfield) and chatting to M1IQD and G6UYG. At the summit, I only logged one C4FM contact - this with Gary M0XGS who seems to be getting me on all my Fusion activations at present. After that, I didn’t have any luck with soliciting further C4FM contacts, nor with accessing SOTA-LINK. I did add four analogue 2m FM QSOs though.
Then back to Macc, pick Liam up, drop off at home, visit a student for some maths private tutoring, back home, walk to the pub with Jimmy and Liam (Becks Blue for me)… Always keeping busy me…