This was designed as an easy activation prior to a convivial lunch with Fraser and the WX played ball - 0C at the start but sunny and, importantly, hardly any wind. Fraser proposed to concentrate mostly on FT8, leaving me with 2m and hf to play with.
Ben Newe is a nice little hill in Strathdon, with a good waymarked path all the way from the small parking area off the Glenbuchat road.
Arriving at the top about 20mins early, we started to unpack and set up, with Fraser choosing a spot closer to the path than me. This meant that he got to entertain 2 visitors who arrived in quick succession, one a biker and the second a chap walking his dog. By the time Fraser was freed up, I was QRV on 2m.
Activation
KX3, 2m transverter, 5el HB yagi, delta loop for 10m, Sotabeams 20/40m dipole
2M0WNA, Mike, was first itl but a lot of CQs just brought silence. Finally, GM0AUL, Rob gave me a shout off the back of the beam in Aberdeen, closely followed by Alex GM5ALX - then more silence.
Turning to 40m, this brought 13 chasers including Denis MW0CBC and a S2S with Tim GW5OLD/P, both members of our Deeside SOTA Whatsapp group. The chasers had more or less dried up when Fraser started his activation on 15m hf (he had a few problems getting FT8 up and running initially) and completely overloaded my KX3 with a 59 hash - same story on 20m, so I had a wander around and took some photos while Fraser worked a nice pile-up.
The man himself
Looking NNE at The Buck, GM/ES-039, which I activated last week - no snow then
Looking North West
Looking North
After some experimenting, we found that Fraser working FT8 on 40m didn’t cause me any problems, so he went ahead with that while I went on 20m. 24 itl.
Fraser then alerted me to Andy MM7MOX/P, who was up on Schiehallion GM/CS-005, so I quickly put the yagi back up for a 2m S2S with him.
I finished on 10m which was busy with a Russian contest. Not many chasers, but good signals from EA8ADS, EA8DGS and SV2OXS.
QRT at 1225 and packed up to head down for lunch at Goodbrand and Ross at Corgarff, a great end to a very relaxing SOTA morning in good company.
Courtesy Google Maps
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