Activation report Cyrn Y Brain GW/NW-043

GW/NW-043 Cyrn-y-Brain - 565m, 2 points
03/05/10

Well we decided after biting the bug a couple of weekends ago, that we would activate at least one summit over the bank holiday weekend, after having family round on Saturday and Sunday this left only Monday to do an activation.
Mum had decided she wanted the car to go out at 13:30 so we needed to be back for then, looking on google earth at the nearby summits we decided on Cyrn y brain, as I’d walked up a few times before, twice for DofE and once for geocaching.

We arrived at 09:45 local time and began the climb with my older brother along for the walk. The summit was reached at around 10:10 and the beam setup by 10:15, plugged the BNC into the handheld and gave a couple of shouts out in 145.500 only for lots of static to come back at me. Quick flick over to GB3CR in the memory confirms there is a problem with the Beam. So I mess with the coax around the connector and then CR bursts into life, so the Beam is broke as I can’t hold the coax, the handheld and shield the mic at the same time.
Out comes the Diamond RH-770 whip which I bought at the Llandudno rally last year. Now was the guy right that sold it to me, would it be as good as I hoped. (I’ll answer that later.) Contacts now start to come in, and I was happy to oblige to pass on a message between two stations. Steve (GW7AAV) Came booming in and promised me a spot, and then the fun began with the stations piling in.

We decided to retreat to the other side of the rocky mound at around 10:00 so had a few minutes break from talking, turned the rig on again, gave one shout and the fun began again. Once 2m went quiet I moved over to 70 to be greeted by Steve, he promised a spot, but shortly afterwords we decided to call it a day. It was getting fat too cold on the summit.

So another day of SOTA, and it was very enjoyable. Now for some observations, the diamond RH-770 exceeded my expectations, pulling in stations from Barrow in Furness, anglesey, caernarfon, Wellington, and Telford to name the long distance ones. I actually think it worked better than the beam owing to the omni directional radiation pattern. I no longer like adding contacts into the database one by one, I now do it via a CSV file, after the database crashed on me after trying the first time. Oh and I decided to do some QSL cards for some of the more interesting contacts, so a few people should expect a card through the door in next couple of days, one family especially. If anyone I’ve worked since starting SOTA wants a card feel free to ask. A preview is available here:

And the log for today

MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:30, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, GW8TBY
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:35, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, G8TSE
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:44, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, GW7AAV
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:47, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, MW0IDX
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:48, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, 2E0RXX
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:48, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, M3VUO
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:49, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, M5AFG
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:53, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, G0ROW
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:54, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, G6LKB
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:56, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, G4RQJ
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 09:57, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, G7OEM
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:00, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, GW3GUX
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:09, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, M1EYP
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:11, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, M0IXR
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:12, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, 2E0DAI
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:16, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, G0SLR
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:17, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, 2E0LAE
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:18, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, M1TZR
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:20, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, 2W0HYM
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:23, GW/NW-043, 144MHz, FM, M0JBC/P
MW6CSS/P, 03/05/10, 10:25, GW/NW-043, 433MHz, FM, GW7AAV

In reply to M6CSS:
Hi Karl,

Many thanks for the contact. Just one small correction to my callsign, it is MW0IDX.

Glad you enjoyed the activation, although I was not too far away from you, you were a cracking signal to me none the less.

73
Roger MW0IDX

In reply to MW0IDX:

Many thanks Rodger not sure how I managed to miss out the “w”. Thanks for the contact I’m sure I’ll work you from the next summit in the not too distant future.

In reply to MW0IDX:

Many thanks Rodger not sure how I managed to miss out the “w”. Thanks for the contact I’m sure I’ll work you from the next summit in the not too distant future.