Saw your spot and listening now on 145.500.
Andy
MM7MOX
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No never heard anyone, had a few cracks from the Baofeng guessing it’s kaput.
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They come kaput from the manufacturer as standard.
Paul, buy a decent radio. When the Chinese manufacturers first started selling in Europe there were a range of radios that were considerably cheaper than radios from Yaesu/Icom/Kenwood. These radios worked quite well with the biggest differences being plastics used in the cases didn’t feel as good as the big 3 radios, software being a little rough around the edges and the manuals being useless. But in general the RF stuff (you know the RF stuff is why you buy a radio) was really quite good. The early Wouxen (pronounced Oh-sheng) 2m and 4m sets being particularly good. Then the flood gates opened and all sorts of radios appeared with a race to the bottom for low price and RF performance and quality.
There’s a reason why these Baofungs etc. are under £15, they’re s***e. Now reading this there will be legions of owners furiously typing how their £15 Wangchungfungtong radio works fine and they use it for moonbounce ops with just the standard rubber duck. And in some cases they can work OK. But for SOTA, you are already making things difficult by climbing up a mountain with a sack load of stuff so you may as well take tech that works on a hill, with an external antenna without needing all sorts of extra filters etc. to get around the RF performance limitations.
The vast majority of 2m handhelds do not work well when you add an external antenna… they overload easily due to lack of filtering or excessive RF gain. There are some that work OK and some that are almost bullet proof. A lot of older simpler handies are much better for SOTA than newer stuff.
Allegedly the newish Yaesu FT70 is good with external antennas on summits. It gives you 2/70 FM narrow/wide and DV. I’ve never tried one but several reports say they work well in RF poor environments. Or you need to buy an older second hand radio. The following can be had cheaply (because they are old and don’t do sexy stuff). All of these are no longer in production but are worth their weight in gold to SOTA ops. Icom V80 (2m), Kenwood FT-79 (2/70), Yaesu VX150/VX170 (2m), Yaesu FT-270R (2m) Yeasu FT-60 (2/70). Although word is spreading that these handies are desirable for niche users (us!) and there is price gouging occurring. You need to keep your eyes and ears open to find one.
Now this is specifically for SOTA… where you want a radio to work on a hilltop which may be co-resident with commercial equipemnt or LOS to a hill with commercial equipment. If you want a super-duper all-singing-and-dancing handy with all kinds of hoopy-frood extras like GPS and APRS built in and a StarTrek matter transporter and who know’s what else for some non-SOTA purpose then there are plenty on the market at great expense and they do work. Just not well for SOTA usage.
So spend your money on a radio that works out of the box and not on something that requires a load of extras to make it perform. There will be many who disagree with me. They’re entitled to their opinion and I’m entitled to tell them they’re wrong. 
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At the cheaper end of the market, I have found the Yaesu FT-4 is relatively Billinge Proof (G/SP-017) which is possibly one of the worst summits around for interference on VHF.
Dont be tempted by something like the Yaesu VX-7 as ive found mine is almost as deaf as the Quansheng/Boafeng handies when around other transmitting equipment.
Theres also those little inline filters you can fit between radio and antenna which I’ve seen work well on Billinge.
Ian
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I listened from about 1010 BST to 1025 BST but didn’t hear anything. I tried calling you on 145.500 about halfway through but didn’t hear any response.
I plan to go up Benarty hill tomorrow if you want to listen out and try a chase.
Andy
MM7MOX
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Ooh aah. 12.5 MHz bandwidth? Our 2 m band is only 4 MHz wide.
73
Ron
VK3AFW.
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Thanks to you all for the advice and guidance. I had to ignore the call to get a quality HT but went for a Quansheng UV-K6 at £21 and £9 for the additional aerial. I deliberately went for orange so I couldn’t lose it if I set it down somewhere. Seemed to work well. I spent yesterday getting the relevant freqs saved so I could be relatively agile changing frees and it all worked out. It was bloody windy on top of East Lomond today but I got into central Edinburgh and Falkirk. I settled for 4 QSO’s in the 45mins I was there, I was interested in seeing if I could do a POTA activation at the same time but there just wasn’t much responses.
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