Thursday 13th April 2017
After working in EA8 recently, EA7 seemed cold when we arrived there on the tour. It warmed up a bit when we moved onto EA5. Here’s a clip from the opening of that show (feel free to ignore / skip!)
Well if I thought Marbella was nippy, you can imagine the shock to the system that 4.5 degrees on the summit of The Cloud G/SP-015 was! Of course, normally, that would be a relatively comfortable and mild night for me in a UK activity contest. On this occasion however, I did feel the cold!
I certainly wasn’t as organised as I should have been, and my mobile phone was nearly out of charge as I arrived on summit. This was unclever, especially as interaction with the ON4KST website is now permitted in these contests. Fortunately, I had my SOTAbeams Phonepole with me, so I could charge up my Samsung Galaxy S3 from my Tracer LifePO4 battery during my activation. I think this is a discontinued product, but instructions to build your own are online: http://www.sotabeams.co.uk/content/Phonepolebuild.pdf
It was another discontinued SOTAbeams product I was using as the aerial, the SB6 Moxon. In days gone by, rotating the antenna (essential in UKACs) was a laborious process involving getting up from the operating position and repegging two guylines of the delta loop!
Anyway, 59 contacts were made, all SSB except for one on CW. DXCCs worked were F, G, GW, GM, GI and GD. Squares worked were IN99, IO64, IO72, IO73, IO74, IO81, IO82, IO83, IO86, IO91, IO92, IO93, IO94, JO01 and JO02. Many more squares were there for the taking (IO75, IO80, IO84, IO85, IO90, JO03 etc) but I just couldn’t track them down!
The last half hour was particularly slow, and my logbook showed a gap between QSO #58 @ 2109z and QSO #59 @ 2129z - I particularly felt the cold through that twenty minutes! Nonetheless it was good to be back activating again after a huge (for me) 20 day gap since my last one! A pint of ale and a beef pie at the Harrington Arms, Gawsworth on the way home helped me to warm back up a bit.