My 900th activation in SOTA was an “on the way home from work” effort, and saw the first outing of the Magic Moggy 20m vertical antenna in 2010.
At 3.50pm on Thursday 11th March 2010, I was parking on Cloudside and removing the 70cm beam kit from my rucksack, replacing it with the MM20. On a mild and calm afternoon, I walked up the hill without donning my fleecy hat. It was donned on the summit though, which was that bit chillier in slight breeze.
20m was busy as I turned my FT-817 on, but a clear QRG was found at 14.012MHz, close enough to my alerted 14.013MHz. Unfortunately, I had allowed my phone to go out of charge, so couldn’t advise the exact QRG via Spotlite. Results were good though, with QSOs into Hungary, Russia, USA (Illinois) and Canada.
A rare dabble with the VX-7R brought in a couple of Macclesfield stations on 2m FM, followed by three from all over the North West (Bury, Tarporley and Connahs Quay) on 70cm FM. A final fling on 20m CW produced RU3AM, following which I went QRT.
I had to miss out on 70cms the other night after snapping my Sotapole on Fair Snape Fell last Sunday. It will take the weight of my HF dipole on a summit, but I doubt it would take the strain put on it by my 9 element Tonna fed with Westflex W103 lashed to the back of my house.
I hope to be back on the air in the VHF contests very soon.
Well done on the 900 activations Tom. That’s not just 900 ascents and 900 descents, but 900 times you’ve assembled the kit, whether it be for a multi-band effort or just a handheld activation.
Sometimes when I’m on my 4th, 5th or 6th summit of the day, setting up the station can verge on being a chore… but I always get on and do it as I know that I am going to get far more out of the summit than the hill-walker who just passes by on the way to the next lump of rock.
Will we see Activation 1000 before the end of the year?
When I started the business of regularly repeating my local summits in order to improve physical fitness, it was with the idea of activating “cheaply” with minimal effort - with a VHF handheld. I did a number of these, before realising that if I was properly organised with my gear and times, I could set up a proper station and still have 20-30 minutes of operating time.
Then along came CW, and the training for physical fitness combined well with the necessary training for CW improvement. So although the original idea of doing lots of repeat activations was indeed to take the easy option with the handheld, circumstance has resulted in me setting up for HF in the majority of cases.
I never find the setting up to be a chore - but often find packing away to be exactly that! The idea was to get to 1000 activations in 2010, but it won’t happen at my recent rate of outings. Need to get a few more done!
