Decided on an early start to beat the traffic left home qth of Newcastle under Lyme around 8am.Took the trusty VX170 hand held and my old Yaesu FT290 Mk1 with the SOTA Beams MFD Antenna.
After a good clear drive down parked up and ready to make the ascent towards the Trig Point for 945am.Decided on FM first and the first contact was G1KDU (Andre)whom I have worked before however not recently and it was a pleasure to work him again. I managed a some contacts into the Cheltenham area G3RMD (Frank)and G4FUJ (Graham)also two chaps at the Racecourse ! Worked well into the Midlands and North with a qso into Wigan 2EOMAS(Mike)it was good to work GW7AAV(Steve) again in Connahs Quay.Just before I got too sunburnt I decided to give 2m SSB a go. This, too yielded good results after swapping the MFD around into a horizontal config with G3NGX (Bill) in Preston and G3ZKN (Don) in Gloucester amongst others !!
Well time was getting on and my arms were getting redder in the sun. I should make special mention of M5DND (Nick)whom I worked and is local to the area who took the trouble to come up to the Summit and take a few photos of my operating position and have a chat !! Also a number of other radio amateurs who made themselves known to me while I was up there !!
So, reluctantly broke the station down and headed for home. All in all a very good activation with over 30 contacts logged. Thanks Gentlemen 73 !