Just a quick thanks to all the loyal and dedicated SOTA chasers who took the time to call in so late on Tuesday evening/early Wednesday morning. Many of you have jobs, so to call in so late in the evening, deserves a very special thanks. The activation was a last minute brainstorm, I just chucked a couple of SLABs into the rucksack and drove to G/SP-004 to work some VHF and look for a bit of DX on HF.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do my homework before leaving on Tuesday evening. Sadly, there was no moon and on reaching the trig point the temperature had dropped and there was a very stiff breeze.
Starting on the 2m fm band at 2330 local time found an amazing 25 chasers!
QSYing to 20m at 0045 local time found Tom MO1EYP and Mark GO0VOF ready with the spots. Indeed, I even managed to work Mark on the 20m band.
After Mark, Barry N1EU and Rich N4EX as well as AJ1F from Alabama all paid a visit.
At 2359z, I drew a line and started another activation. Calls from Argentina, USA, (Barry N1EU for 2 more points, cheers Barry) and Canada rattled in. A nice contact with FG5 Guadalupe was in the bag and a little later 9Y4 Trinidad as well as an unusual United Nations call, 4U1VIC.
After a couple of hours up there, the wind really whipped up and I was close to chucking the towel in, especially when the seven metre fishing pole blew over for the third time. By then my interest in radio had wained somewhat and with my virtual inability to spot myself on the DX cluster (intermittent signal on the mobile) I was becoming very frustrated.
All in all, good fun but hard work. As for the rest of Wednesday, this was a write off. The 22Ah Lucas AGM battery performed magnificently, so much so, that I didn’t even need the 10Ah SLAB which I’d lugged up there for nothing
Just 126 contacts for the evening. However, with some nice DX in the log, no VHF after 0100 local time, and no phone signal for most of the night, not too bad.
Many thanks to all the chasers, both sides of the pond.
73 Mike
2O0YYY