I did my first activation in over a month on Wednesday. Some will know that my son attends college, and that public transport is so poor and unreliable, I gave up my job in order to drive my son to and from Kendal.
Lambrigg Fell G/LD-046 is close to Kendal and the forecast was reasonable on Wednesday, so I dropped my son off and then headed to Roan Quarry where I parked the car. The walk towards the windfarm was straightforward and quite easy. I’d not done any Morse, indeed any radio at all, since early March, I was a little bit worried about whether I’d still be up to speed on CW.
I’d taken my son up Helvellyn to attempt to grab some very late winter bonus points unfortunately the weather was extremely bad and the priority was to get safely off the summit after touching the trig rather than mess about with radio. I had been quite driven towards gaining double mountain goat and was trying to hoover up bonus points as much as I could, however the weather just didn’t cooperate this winter.
My son during our failed SOTA activation attempt of Helvellyn in early March.
I felt a bit down about SOTA but with the brighter weather finally starting to make appearances I thought that I ought to get going with it again. I have a bit over 100 points to go to make it to double goat.
I needn’t have worried about my Morse on Lambrigg Fell, it honestly felt as though I’d never had a break. I turned the CW speed down a bit and cracked on. I felt the activation went fine and it was nice to have an S2S with Bruno @HB9CBR in Italy operating as I/HB9CBR/P. I even copied the SOTA ref OK!
Reading Matthew @M0MZB’s book about SOTA adventures by bicycle, I was inspired to try to have a go myself. It will soon be my birthday so I decided that this year I’d like a new bike. I ordered my bike early as availability seems to be a problem. I wanted a bike that was comfortable and had capability to add panniers. I decided upon a Cube model and I literally could find only one available in the UK, so I ordered it!
I had the idea to do an activation by cycling from home last year but I ran out of opportunities to make it happen. Ingleborough is one of my nearest summits and I’ve cycled the route to a starting point a few times. Last week I cycled to the cafe at Clapham and managed totally fine.
Yesterday I cycled up to the Lancashire border and looked across to the Yorkshire Three Peaks (G/NP-004, G/NP-005, & G/NP-010). You can see Ingleborough just above the bike frame -
Going forward I would definitely like to try an activation from home via bicycle, there’s a few summits that should be within reach. I’m also looking at trying a bikepacking trip in Scotland, but unfortunately there won’t be any Marilyns within reach, but there is scope for some radio. Looks like I need a bikepack friendly 40m SSB radio, I’m working towards converting a KD1JV Slop Bucket to 40m.
Colin
