Surprisingly snowy on this hill today; about 5cm of fresh snow. Ascended in moderate visibility and took shelter behind the summit rocks. It was breezy and very cold. LiPO performed perfectly - which was just as well as there was no plan B.
2m SSB was my choice today and 15 contacts were quite easy to make. Don G0RQL always looked like being the best DX at 356km, but he wasn’t. That honour was snatched by PE1BIW at 559km. Quite pleased with that contact. Mark G0VOF tried to tempt me onto CW but I was frozen by that stage and a rapid exit seemed more appealing - sorry. I also passed on the offer of a cup of tea at G4BLH’s QTH. The offer was appreciated though - thanks Mike. It was snowing heavily at times as I came off the hill.
Used the trip to try out some hypermiling techniques. These seem to require a lot of concentration but are quite interesting to experiment with. Curiously the low maximum speed that I drove at was compensated to a large extent by a higher average speed due to very careful anticipation of events in front of me.
I saw your alert for Boulsworth Hill-Lad Law, & having had no luck hearing any of the South/Mid Wales activations I pointed my beam towards G/SP-008. I heard a G8 station calling CQ but he was very weak so I didn’t respond. A couple of minutes later he called again & he was S9 so I went back to him.
It was G8GXP in Wakefield, & we were 59 both ways at first. very quickly signals dropped & we were both down to S1 barely readable, which was very strange. A little later we were 57 both ways again. I was beaming due East from Blackburn running 50 Watts into a 5 element Yagi & He was beaming towards the Netherlands running 400 Watts into what I think he said a 12 element Yagi. It was something big anyway!
Some quite strange reflections going on there !
I heard your initial CQ but you must have been beaming South,as you were not too strong, but once you turned your 3 element yagi towards the West you were full scale on the meter on my FT897D.
I was surprised to hear there was so much Snow up there, as we had only had Sleet here in Blackburn the day before, but it is surprising what a difference a change in altitude can make.
My comment about CW was purely because I know you do operate 2m CW & would have gladly spotted you if you wanted to work that mode. I am becoming more confident every week, so I would have actually tried to work you as well
