Myself (Ben) @GW4BML and a good friend Allan @GW4VPX have booked a boat to cross over to the Island of Bardsey this coming Sunday 10th July. We will be doing a joint activation on the SOTA summit of ‘Mynydd Enlli’ GW/NW-072 which is on the Island and hasn’t been activated for just over 3 years! We should be set up for approximately 10:45 UTC or slightly later.
We will operate on 60/40/20m - SSB and 145-FM, so if this summit is a unique for any chasers, please have a listen out for us. We will spot on every band we operate on
Let’s hope HF conditions are on our side and we can make many contacts with the SOTA community.
I should definitely have a good chance of getting you on 2 m from home, and if the weather is nice enough, I’ll try on HF too, but I’ve got quite a high noise floor on 40 m, so might not work out. Would be fun though!
Some photographed still active in SOTA - but all 18 years older! Shirley MW0YLS sadly SK. Looking back at these photos, I can’t quite believe how many SOTA activations I did with my two little sons, but thought nothing of it at the time!
Yeah great memories!
We revisited in 2009 so that Jimmy could activate it - the 2004 trip was before he was licensed. That time we had the summit to ourselves instead of taking our turn amongst other activators - plus I was now capable of HF CW activating. But the weather was not as nice!
Hope you’ve got the suncream with you! We had a lovely sunny day and flat calm sea (essential for me) when we did the trip and enjoyed both the summit activation (with lovely views) and the island. The island is farmed and, we can confirm, that the farmer swears in English when thoughtless visitors leave a gate open and he has to go chasing after the stock. Leaving the island took quite some time as Colin, the ferryman, possibly misjudged the tide as he had to keep leaping from one side of the boat to the other and pushing hard to get us to move down the channel. Offers of help were refused while he worked at speed (presumably because the tide continued to drop) but he finally succeeded and we had a smooth ride back. On landing the passengers were so impressed by his efforts (and the lovely day out) that a forest of bank notes were quickly thrust into his hand. Those were the days (September 2017) as a) we paid in cash and b) we paid at the END of the trip and not weeks before! PS I have just looked at the stats and see it has only been visited once since we went …I think you might get a deluge of chasers! Good luck
Viki M6BWA
Hi @M6BWA Viki, I hope both yourself and Rod are keeping well! Sorry I couldn’t make contact with you on your GM trip, slightly too far for me on 2m We had a great time on Bardsey Island, full report to follow later. The sun cream was definitely packed and used, but not enough for me and Martha, we still managed to come back with burnt arms, not too bad though! Little Lyra really enjoyed herself with plenty of wildlife to see and flat tracks to walk on. It was still Colin arranging the tours and we didn’t have to pay until the end, cash only look forward to speaking soon!
We had a great time on Bardsey Island, full report to follow later. The sun cream was definitely packed and used, but not enough for me and Martha, we still managed to come back with burnt arms, not too bad though! Little Lyra really enjoyed herself with plenty of wildlife to see and flat tracks to walk on. It was still Colin arranging the tours and we didn’t have to pay until the end, cash only