Well done for activating on 70 anyway, despite the issues Brad.
We had a listen for people on 70cm while we activated Dent G/LD-045 on HF, but heard nothing at all (just using the Quansheng rubber duck). It started raining about 2 minutes into the activation, so we didn’t hang around. Hope others had better luck from their summits!
73, Simon and Nic.
Shame the wind meant a lot of us had to resort to basics, and would have liked to see how that antenna performed.
Whilst not strong, making the trip to Billinge Hill with 1w from a handie and duck is good going. At readability 5 (which is all that matters on FM).
Thanks for the summit to summit.
Ian
G7ADF
Well, I went for it 
I’ve chosen Slieveboy EI/IE-038 4 pointer, which offers an excellent take off eastwards. From the start the weather was a bit suspicious as was the forecast. While driving to site, I’ve passed through all sorts of weather and was quite nervous if it’ll be actually worth getting my good self uphill with such challenging condx.
Slieveboy is a telco site with a barrier and a service road up the hill. Surprisingly the barrier was open, but the rule number one - never drive through an open barrier if you don’t have a key I’ve duly walked up those 40 minutes, got a bit wet on my way and a bit cold from a side wind. To my relief, rain has suddenly stopped when I got to the summit, as well as those telco constructios has offered a desent wind shelter.
So I found myself in fairly comfortable position to stay on the summit for couple of hours. I’ve made my regular 2m activation and after qualified the summit I’ve moved over to 70cm.
Having a 5el beam and 40W gave me certain confidence indeed. Nevertheless, I’ve only ended up with 2 QSOs and no S2S though Still can’t complain as a QSO with Adrian @G1OXH/P got me to 311 km which looks to be ok for 70cm
P.S. I did hear few more stations on the band, but couldn’t make them out as those were just slightly over my noise floor.
This short video covers a bit of visual:
EI4JY@EI/IE-038
My regular 70cm setup:
WInd Wind and more Wind meant the beam stayed firmly on the floor of Billinge Hill (G/SP-017)
A rigid aluminium j-pole (£5 purchase from Blackpool rally) was attached to a fishing pole and turned out to be star of the show. 25W from the FT-8900 produced 23 qsos with 1 sts on 70cm with Paul M0PAB/P on Titterstone Clee (G/WB-004). I did work another s-t-s on the handie on 2m with GW7HEM/P on Cadair Berwyn (GW/NW-012) not realising that Mike would also be operating on 70cm.
I also operated as a BOTA (Bunkers on the Air) as B/G-0445 which is one of only a handful of locations in England where a Summit and Bunker overlap.
Many thanks all.
Map of Qsos below.
Shots fired. I also extended to the rest of the UK.
| UKBOTA Reference | SOTA Reference |
|---|---|
| B/G-0445 | G/SP-017 |
| B/G-1093 | G/WB-004 |
| B/G-1181 | G/SE-008 |
| B/G-1447 | G/SC-003 |
| B/GD-0010 | GD/GD-005 |
| B/GJ-0006 | GJ/JE-001 |
| B/GM-0108 | GM/SS-286 |
| B/GM-0220 | GM/SS-280 |
| B/GM-0237 | GM/SI-189 |
| B/GM-0317 | GM/NS-145 |
| B/GM-0376 | GM/SI-157 |
I must say even though the wind caused me some problems I really enjoyed the event, I lost my antenna and at one point my hat and bag I had used to carry the limited gear up. As I was hiding from the wind behind a boulder ( part of one of the Cairns ) and as I was a few feet of the peak few all my contacts were North from my location in South Shropshire. I’ve never been up there without the wind being from the same direction ( I live very close and visit Titterstone often with my dogs) The Baofengs RX falls apart on 2 meters because of the airband and radar systems made even worse because hiding behind the hill because of the wind puts you right in the firing line of these the but on 70cms it worked fine.
A couple of the photos of the offending comms gear ( there are more)
Thanks to everyone for the contacts and here’s looking to the next one. ( Hopefully with some better gear !)
73 for now Brad
[quote=“GM5ALX, post:25, topic:37998”]
I also extended to the rest of the UK
This is useful. When i did my visual only check using the map on the BOTA site, there where a few marginal ones where i suspect summit activation zone extends into the bunker zone. Probably the same with POTA. Are there any with all 3.
I was close with handful (between 1 and 5) inEngland (4).
I actually didn’t account for activation zone, this was just a quick check against the lat/long in the SOTA db.
I could add an arbitrary amount, like a radius of 100m, to the SOTA summits and see if there are any more that overlap, then inspect the contour lines on a map to validate. But that’s for another work lunchtime 
Just don’t do it while crossing any roads
Is there any other way of spotting these 70cm advents I don’t do facebook ?
I have taken it upon myself to post a thread like this one when the next date is announced to raise awareness for people not part of the Facebook group. I will be doing so again as soon as it is posted.
In general there are 4 year so the next one will be in August/September time at a guess.
To maximise daylight the timings do change in the winter events to say 11am till 2pm local clock time but the events are less structured than the 144 alive events so the timings are more of a “this will be when you are most likely to get activity” times.
Ian
Thanks Ian I will keep my eyes on this site.
Brad
