Today was my 15 year anniversary for SOTA activating. Due to later commitments I popped along to a local summit, Hope Mountain GW/NW-062
Spoke with many regulars over a very relaxed 3 hour activation.
Nice pass by the BelugaXL landing at Airbus in Broughton.
Icom IC-705
2m FM and SSB vertical on a SlimG
2m SSB horizontal on a SOTABeams SB270 3 element yagi - nice contact into Norwich and some surprising success with regulars in mid Wales who I didn’t expect to hear.
40m and 20m SSB on an EFHW.
Thanks to everyone I’ve worked along the way, plus all those I’ve learned from and of course the face to face friends I’ve made too.
Hopefully see at least another 15 years (I’ll be late 70s by then).
Next big milestone will be 5K activation points or 1000 activations.. not sure which will be first.
Well done Gerald. You seem to have had a good day. We had in town commitments so unable to even attempt a contact. Hope to catch you again before too long.
Congratulations Gerald. Thanks for our S2S yesterday - I hadn’t realised it was your 15th anniversary. I was sat on G/NP-028 for about 4 hours in the sunshine - it looks like you had similar conditions.
Well done on the anniversary. I haven’t seen the Beluga in North Wales but did see it at Toulouse, had a few hours to kill before a return flight back to the UK so went to the Aeroscopia museum, well worth the visit if you are into Airbus aircraft.
GW/NW-001 Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon on a crisp winter day having cramponed up to the summit. Ended up with a Radcom cover picture out of that one!
GW/NW-050 Gyrn Ddu when I was almost struck by lightning. Struck about 100m away from me!
SV/CR-041 Katharo a first activation on Crete that required some careful route finding and mountaineering care in very unfamiliar hot conditions. It’s not been repeated so far.
Anywhere I met up with other SOTA operators, whether planned or a surprise. There have been quite a few surprise meetings, more than you might expect!
Welcome to the 15 year club, Gerald. Glad to have your company - or I was until I checked your SOTA statistics and discovered you outrank me by….17 points!! You are on 4618 while I languish on 4601 (plus a small handful of 1 pointers I haven’t quite typed in yet.) You also beat me hollow on average score per activation with 4.8pts while I attempt lower hills (and repeat them up to 15 times!!) so I’m on 2.98 from my 1543 activations I do win on the winter bonus points with 1161 (WML - 600) or my total points would be even further behind yours. I had no idea we were involved in this struggle and know that you will soon be streaking ahead.
We are currently planning another Scottish trip from 2 -23 May to try to harvest a handful of new summits but this is getting more challenging as we have already hoovered up most of the easy hills within reasonable reach - especially with only one driver and starting in Hereford.which makes it a bit of a trek to even reach the Scottish Border. We will be lucky to harvest another 10-12 I believe, which won’t quite bridge the gap between my 605 and your 629 (again much closer than I might have guessed) but it might be enough to spur you on to visit yet more new hills.
Whatever happens I hope you continue to enjoy your hills and are blessed with the same weather that you enjoyed on your historic anniversary. Keep up the good work and I look forward to our next meeting.
Thanks Robert! It would be nice to meet up in the summer somewhere, I’ll be in Germany in late August and early September if you are planning another SOTA “trolley dash”?
Thanks Ben - great to get you as always!
Thanks Viki,
I might have recently passed you in Activator points, but it has to be considered that I’ve done quite a lot of overseas “big point” summits, so your all UK total is much more impressive.
I suspect my next uniques will be in Brittany and Normandy in late May, then I’m aiming at a bunch in late August and early September in Germany. Then a few in Gran Canaria in October. If all goes well I’ll add maybe another 30-40 this year. I might try a Scottish trip too if I can fit it in.
Sue and I are looking forward to seeing you both whenever our schedules can line up!
that’s quite along time.