Yesterday (Sunday) was forecast to be the best Sota day for days, so I packed my kit and set off towards Alston at 0700. The roads were empty and I arrived at the road head on the B6277 Middleton in Teesdale road at 0840.There was a thin coating of slush on the treated road surface but nothing to get excited about. Off the road, the snow depth was about 20cm, visibility about 30metres but the wind was light from the North West.
40 minutes later I was on the summit, looking for a suitable hillock on which to sit to send CW. Just then the fog cleared and the visibility over to Cross fell improved.
I erected my 6m pole and link dipole, added another two more 2 layers of clothing and settled down to work a few stations.
Being Sunday, 40m was busy with a few contest stations but there were lots of space to find a QRG. A quick SMS and I was in business. The pilup developed quickly and was large, so I kept the QSO’s as short as gentlemanly possible. However it seems that the formation of a pilup attracts contesters like wasps round honey, whatever, at 1032 I decided to QSY to 30 m and a bit more sensibility. That was fine until 1050 when I became aware of an increase in wind speed, spindrift was building up behind and around me, time to stop sending and pack up ASAP.
The decent was quite unpleasant with the spindrift in my face, but it only took 20 minutes to reach the more sheltered slope. Then back to the car for a flask of soup prior to the drive back home to Morpeth.
Thank you to all who have worked me on this activation and all the other ones during the past year. Have a great Christmas, CU in the New Year.
David
