Coming from the flat lands of Suffolk it’s not often M3XFG and I get to activate a summit. However, during family camping trips to the far west of Cornwall for the last few years we have taken along radio gear in the hope that one year we get the chance of reasonable weather to activate Watch Croft.
This year the weather was superb as Tom and I set out for the trig at the top, the gentle breeze keeping us cool in the sun and the views of the Atlantic over the cliffs were stunning.
The trig pillar at the top provided a drop in for the 10m pole and we set up a simple wire vertical for 40m with wire counter poise. With 40 watts from the '857 there was a steady run of chasers for 45 minutes until the SLAB started to drop off. Backed off the output to 20 watts and then finished with a summit to summit with OK/PA3FYG/P on OK/KR-067 thanks to a tip off from G4WSB that he was a couple of Kcs away.
Thank you to all the chasers for making this a very pleasant and satisfying activation.
In reply to G7MLO:
Hi James,
Glad you had great weather when you activated G/DC-007. Sadly when I activated it during last summer holiday in Cornwall I had rain and no visibility at the top, d’oh. However, I had lots of SOTA fun on 40M CW and 60M SSB. I also used a FT857 but to a link dipole with only 5W.
I always like the S2S QSO,s and they have a bonus with some chaser points as well.
I used 25w and 10m vertical on border OK/SP, about 2 mtrs in OK land at 1188m, no SP equivalent there. I guess it does not matter that my xyl was in the shadow in SP!
It’s a great summit, one which I’ve activated 5 times. It’s rather a long way from my home QTH, but just a stone’s throw from the in-laws QTH in Lelant near St Ives.
I activated it just yesterday (23rd Aug) and had a weak, QSB-ridden call from GM3WFK/P on GM/SI-154. I was running 40 Watts, FT-857, inverted-V dipole at about 8m / 25feet AGL. Not sure about John’s station.
It was a difficult QSO but worth it for what we can both claim to be the ODX inter-UK, Summit to Summit record of 1133km, IO70ED to IP90IA (unless someone can prove otherwise!)
Maybe that’s a new statistic that the can be generated from the database, or the basis of an Award?