Yesterday I had to go to Bath to see someone, and figured, since it was quite a long round trip, that I’d break the journey one way or another by trying to activate Walbury Hill G/SE-001. Plans for an early morning activation on my way there were scuppered when I didn’t wake up early enough. I set an alert for 16:00z, and headed for Bath. Around junction 5 on the M25 I learned of a complete M25 closure a little further round, and abandoned the motorway for a scenic route. Inevitably, the drive to Bath took about an hour and a half longer than I’d planned for. Thankfully, it was a fine day, and the scenic route was mostly pleasantly scenic.
Inevitably, I was a bit late heading back from Bath, hit the beginnings of the evening rush, and took longer to get to the summit than I’d expected. I updated my alert along the way, first to remove the “145-fm” bit when I realised my handheld was still on charge at home, and later to shift the activation from 16:00z to 17:15z.
My GPS played a trick on me by taking me over the summit to the parking spot I had bookmarked; not the best of tracks to take a very small car over. Having reached the car park, I then walked back up the track, and bearing in mind the chilly breeze and G1PCR’s comments about sheep, I decided to make use of one of the fences. I picked a suitable fence post, and set up my inverted-V link dipole within sight of the trig point on the sheep-free side of the fence…
It was a little breezy, and the wind chill made life less comfortable than it might have been. That, added to the late start and the setting Sun, set a limit on the time I had on summit. I spent about 20 minutes on 60 metres SSB, having chats with 11 stations in that time. It was pleasant relaxed pile-up-free activating. When calls dried up I then opened the links and had a listen on 40 metres. It was a busy band, both in the SSB and CW sections. I opened a couple more links, found a clear spot on 30 metres, put out a CQ (pre-stored in the rig’s memory) and RBNgate worked its magic. My CW is still far from perfect; it took me a while to get 7 more contacts. I’m sure, miss at least one or two more. (Sorry, SP7FRO, by the time you called the wind-chill was getting to me…). Sunset wasn’t far away, so I packed up.
I got home a bit after 22:00z…
73, Rick M0LEP
