I have just started doing my log for today’s activations - and was aghast to discover the page for the morning activation headed G/WB-008. I was actually on the golf course at G/WB-011, Bradnor Hill. Both score 1 point so no effect on Chaser Scores but it might affect Chaser Uniques and S2S recording.
Sincere apologies for this. At first I assumed that the spot would have been correct - but no-one pointed out the discrepancy because there wasn’t one. 4G was not playing so instead of spotting from my Alert I used SMS and spotted using the wrong reference.
I did activate G/WB-008 BUT ON 18MHz (Bedlam on 20m and 40m) at 14:50 - until the horses started demolishing my aerial for the third time when I gave up.
Oh dear, it is confession time again. Let’s get this straight from the beginning we (M0JLA and M6BWA) walked up the 2 small summits near Kington together and it was not one of our 'swapping summits) days. So it was Bradnor Hill G/WB-011 at about 11am and Hergest Ridge G/WB-008 about 1500 - despite what we may have advertised or said. Please check your logs and amend where necessary - our joint apologies. Our only excuses are flying golf balls and hungry horses!
We parked in Kington, crossed the bypass and went up Bradnor Hill G/WB-011 where he, sensibly chose a spot to the left of the fairway,with little gorse as protection as they have cut it down, and used HF. I needed more exposure but some protection from the wind so crossed the fairway and ‘hid’ behind a small tree and a couple of bushes, donned my luminous hat (but soon wished it was a hard one!), erected the white dipole and called on 2m (9) and 70cm (2 - but I wasn’t staying any longer…) During that 40 mins I had watched one ball land in the rough where I had nearly sat and another that hadn’t quite reached me and was in the dead bracken nearby - both within 20 yds of me. For the latter I had to get up and stand behind him as he aimed through my guys at the far distant hole. I now realise the golfers were aiming into the wind and perhaps this was causing the balls to stray onto my side rather than the other. I cut this activation short on safety grounds and we returned by the same delightful sunken path into Kington.
Here things started to go wrong again as we joined our usual route up (avoiding the long tarmac trudge) and the usual grassy field was a mud bath (sheep!) reaching a crescendo at the gate of course. The rest of the route through the wood was drier than expected and we were soon on the open common and aiming for the clump of stones not far from the trig - and the horses! I chose a more distant clump of stones (so the horses didn’t find me) but got confused when taking a call before the dipole was fully erected and wrote down WB-011 on my notebook instead of the correct ‘WB-008’, and gave out the wrong reference (but right name of the hill) until I was admonished by M0JLA who was busy taking the remains of his mast down after feeding one of the hungry horses. It was only back at the QTH that he realised he had spotted the first hill as WB-008 and not the correct ‘WB-011’. Oh dear, will we both lose our ‘SOTA licences’ at the next review?? Should I warn the super band of chasers that helped me so much in Angus and Aberdeenshire last May that we are quite a bit slower going up the (little) hills now and I am likely to not only get the pronunciation of the hill wrong but probably am naming the wrong summit.as well on our, now getting imminent tour, 1 - 20 May? That is always assuming that I stay upright! Here’s hoping.
73 Viki
I notice from the Who Chased Me page that most chasers still have loged a QSO with me on WB-008 in the morning. All the morning QSOs from either of us were actually from Bradnor Hill, G/WB-011.
73,
Rod