Antenna problems on G/SP-014

Caroline and I activated Longridge Fell G/SP-014 on the way to Blackpool yesterday. Caroline did fine on 2m FM. I struggled on 5MHz. There was a horrible noise on FE, so I called on FL, with occasional announcements on FE, and self-spotted. The only station I heard was GW7AAV at about 41, but I don’t think he was hearing me.

Then I noticed that the SWR was a bit high; not disastrous but certainly not right. I went to check the antenna and found that the wire had broken out of the powerpole at one of the 40m links, so in effect I had one 60m leg and one 40m leg. Rather than attempt a fix I decided to QSY to 40m. I made my first couple of contacts fairly quickly, but then had at least two other stations calling CQ on top of me, presumably unable to hear me and each other. I found a better frequency and picked up a reasonable number of contacts, mostly into Europe.

Repair of antenna is on the (long) list of jobs for today before heading for Scotland tomorrow.