First piece of news - don’t drive into the Walna Scar car park, get your rucksack out and start walking. I only found out on my return that it is now pay and display - the machine is out of view as you enter the car park. There are barriers now to stop folk parking on the start of the paths towards Walna Scar and The Old Man, but it looks like they’ve created a new parking area. There is also a new car park about 5 mins walk down the road, and no parking in any of the makeshift laybys on the way up.
10 mins walk in I found I’d left the SDCARD for the Panasonic TZ-70 in the laptop, so that became a useless brick in my pocket.
The ascent was fairly brisk, I think it took around an hour and fifteen minutes. I took the standard tourist route past all the ironmongery and abandoned mining buildings, always interesting.
Mine cart cables
Old mining buildings
Toppled tower
Fix the Fells
There was lots of work in progress by Fix the Fells on the path up, wouldn’t want one of those rock bags landing on my head! At the summit I found, as expected, the wind was brisk, but although not in cloud it was skirting fairly close to the summit keeping things decidedly cool.
Trig point
View from the Cairn Stone Shelter
Cairn Stone Shelter
Given the wind I decided to keep the Slim J in the bag and use the handheld. First QSO was at 07:39 UTC with David in Ulverston G6LKB and I then worked 7 early risers on 2m FM.
Following me up was a lady who listened curiously to the 2m QSOs then approached. “Sounds too much like work to me” she announced - a current air traffic controller. I expressed surprise that military jets still use AM radio, and we chewed the cud for a while about our love of aviation. She only ever wanted to be a fighter jet pilot - no chance as a woman back then. I dropped in a PDP reference about ‘old-school’ ATC systems, and I think I did well in my limited knowledge. We were treated to another four F15s passing below this summit - no chance of a photo with a standard phone camera.
Setup of the HF Sotabeams Band Hopper IV (5 band now) dipole was tough in the wind, and as it happens it got it all wrong with the wind direction, resulting in the antenna wire taking the strain as it wasn’t perpendicular to the wind. A snap in the upwind 80m section had me re-orient it more sensibly across the wind, however my ‘sit mat’ absolutely launched itself away down the hill, no chance of catching it unfortunately - I did have a good look on the way down. Unlike my more heavy-duty dipole this is still using crock-clips which make it really simple when one detaches to strip a bit of wire and carry on. With the new antenna when a powerpole dropped off I had no choice but to snip the other one off so I could wrap the wires together, not something I’d thought about during construction.
20m ssb was working really well with true 59 being dished out consistently and the pileup of 30 stations taking just 20 minutes to work through. Two activators SV2RUJ/P and SV3IEG/P on SV/ST-050 dropped in for S2S - it was hard work and helpfully S57S just checked with me at the end of the pileup that I had both in the log.
Moving to 80m I found S0 noise and strong signals again with a very healthy 14 contacts in the log. 40m was working nearly as well as 20m with 23 contacts both Inter-G and continental including a S2S with @DL6FBK Paul on DM/HE-547. I picked my last working frequency on 60m but on @G8ADD Brian’s advice I moved down the band to allow EU stations a better chance. Six contacts in the log. @HB9LEK Martin on HB/SG-040 was a strong signal in my final search-and-pounce together with DL2KL/P on DM/BM-174 - both on 20m.
I manned up and spotted on 30m CW and I’m sure I had loads of chasers get bored with my poor copying skills but I think I got good contacts with seven stations - in between the antenna mast falling over and an inquisitive child and knowledgeable Australian (formed SWL from Gold Coast recounting tales of listening to ships in Hawaii). I contemplated spotting for 80m CW, but could hear no other CW on the band and found I was struggling with the spot due to cold setting in and thought better of it.
FT-817 & MiniPA50 25w all bands
One of the quickest runs of contacts I’ve ever had with a total of 91 QSOs in the log. Thanks to all the chasers and fellow activators. I had to bug out for daddy duties in the afternoon, but the Old Man is always interesting and well worth the early morning. The path up looks like it is covered in little ants as folk make their way to this iconic location - who can blame them. I must have looked like I knew was I was doing as I got stopped by several folk asking for directions, and the family parked next to me in the car park had seen my antics and were curious. The fact they were all eating ice creams didn’t do me any good - had to get me one of those!
Didn’t meet a single car on the Walna Scar road on the way back - quite remarkable!
