On a visit to Sutherland to visit family I tried to fit in some sota as well.
Plans were all very weather dependent and I try and plan contingencies. Travelling North on a very quiet A9, I ended up on my third choice of hill GM/NS-155 due to lower cloud at the first two options.
I thought today would be a bit better, plan A was GM/NS-089 Ben Griam Mor but the forecast was for rain coming from the southeast.
So plan B was GM/NS-103 Ben Hiel, the forecast was for higher cloudbase and no rain until the evening.
It didn’t turn out quite that way, the cloud was coming and going from about 300m asl and the hill turned out to be quite wet.
I parked at the north end of Loch Loyal and followed a track up to a phone tower. The track carried on past and away across the hill. There were several tracks and they kept fading out. They mostly went in the right direction and I didn’t figure out why they were there until I found a .270 cartridge case. Ben Loyal appeared briefly wreathed in cloud
It was quite hard to get a sense of the hill in the cloud but at some points it was very quiet with no wind. That changed at the summit cairn where the wind was strong and bitterly cold.
I went up to the summit then found a sheltered spot to set up just below it behind a huge rock.
Four qso’s on 40m with a lot of QRM followed by eight on 15m, highlight was W4GO calling in from Virginia. No takers on 2m despite answering a call on the HT on the ascent. After 20 minutes I was too cold to rerig the dipole for other bands and wanted to get off the hill before it was too dark.
I can see now why very few GM/NS summits have had winter bonus activations.
My boots are now drying in front of the Raeburn in the kitchen.
Hopefully better tomorrow morning for a flyby activation of Struie hill GM/NS-138.
Andy
MM7MOX
