The forecast looked good - blue sky with a gentle breeze, but on parking the car at Nateby Common there was quite a lot of cloud and quite a lot of wind. It took us about 50mins to climb the 3km and 180m of ascent,. The temperature was about freezing, but there was only a very thin layer of ice, so it took some additional time to navigate through the bog, but all the humans have dry feet! The two spaniels (Woody and Jet) are quite useful in that if their legs disappear in the bog it probably wont support us!
I made a conscious decision not to bother with a shelter and to hide around the back of one of the standards - so in the AZ but not at the trig point, so it rapidly became a very quick activation. The antenna was a 42ft wire with a 17ft counterpoise as an inverted L. Given the temperature (0C with lots of windchill) I just propped it up against the standard and within 5 minutes with 7 in the log I packed up, already feeling the cold.
So a new approach for this activation, the mast just propped up with only one antenna. (Normally I would have done the antenna as more of an inverted “V” and had a 2m J Pole up the mast too - but that probably would have needed guying and it was just too cold) and rather than use then normal paper log I logged straight into HAMRS as I already had the phone out…. and it worked a treat. Perhaps I’ll try the fast approach again! Apologies to anyone I missed.
Thanks again to all the chasers, and apologies for the Woody QRM - he barks on the sight of a radio on a summit, and apologies for not getting on any other bands - but it was just too cold!
Katie, the mast and one of the nine Standards!
PS Last week we called at Keswick on the way home from Low Fell and paid £3-50 for an hours parking, but found an excellent dog-friendly cafe (Java). Kirkby Stephen has free parking and I have now tried 2 of the 3 cafes and so far and I think the most generous description might be “sub-optimal”, so probably worth the parking fee in Keswick. The Cafes we tried in Kirkby Stephen may well be best descibed by a Terry Pratchett Quote….”had a successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realising that most of his customers want meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits”
- Paul
