Activation Report - Staple Hill G/SC-004

The weekend forecast changed several times during this week but today turned out to be fine with some sunshine. I followed the route which Phil, G4OBK suggests in his article, accessible from the summit home page on the SOTA WATCH website. It is an easy, steady climb to the summit and I found a good spot within the AZ not far from the Trig point.

The summit is wooded and a handy pine tree served as a support for my SOTA pole and I started by calling CQ on 144.300 with no takers. I changed over to vertical polarisation and called CQ again on 145.500. I was answered by Martyn, MW1MAJ and Caroline, MW3ZCW who were about to set out on their activation of Wentwood in South Wales. We exchanged reports and hoped that we would find each other again when, once they reached the their summit. I was really please to hear them working from a handy from about 50 miles away. Next came Peter, MW6ZAN in Barry and then M3TJQ, Andrew just up in the road in Taunton quickly reaching four on 2m.

Following Colin, M1BUU’s advice after my last report I rigged up a dipole rather then a long wire and found myself working a pileup on 20m – calls from Spain, Czech Republic, Austria and Italy and the icing on the cake was CU3AA, Joao in the Azores.

Returning to 2m before leaving my call found Martyn and Caroline again, now within their activation zone we managed an S2S. Unfortunately there were no takers on 6m, either FM or SSB but all in all in excellent day with 9 contacts made. Thanks to all the chasers. 73

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