With the current spell of decent weather forecast to end soon, I took the oportunity of activating one of the higher GW/NW summits. I used a walkers’ route - no scrambling - but no avoiding the boulder field near the summit. I’ll add route details to the ‘Resources’ in the summit details. I was using 20W ssb from an FT857 to a stepped dipole
A self-spot (Vodafone) for 80M brought silence - for a minute - and then M0COP, followed by a minor pile-up of 13 chasers. This included Bill as EI/G4WSB/P from EI/IE-018 (Fairy Castle) for a summit-to-summit. A change of band to 40M and a self-spot brought an immediate call from Don, G0RQL. He was followed by another pile-up of 19 chasers. There was one puzzle amoungst them in that DJ5VM (Bruno ?) is shown in QRZ.COM as being a silent key. Perhaps his call has been passed on to a relative or friend. Another feature was G4MSF/P, operating from a park bench in Gateshead using a helium balloon to hold a half-wave end-fed wire aloft, QSB being due to a breeze bringing the balloon almost down to ground level. Having worked through the pile-up on 40M, I changed band to 20M and again self-spotted. The previous Monday (Bank Holiday) I had been on Moel Llyfnant (GW/NW-018) and had set up the stepped dipole on a N-S orientation - there is little alternative on that summit. This netted K2SNJ (Jim, New Jersey, USA). I made sure this time that the antenna was set up with roughly the same orientation and was not disappointed. Among the 27 chasers on 20M were N1ZJ and W1OW, both in Mass. USA. There were also summit to summit QSOs with DL/ON9CBQ/P and DL/ON4UP/P on DM/RP-002. I also had a QSO with an operator in Poole, Dorset prefixing has callsign with HB9/ as he was using a computer link to the Transceiver located in Switzerland. To me, this isn’t what amateur radio is about, but that is only a personal view.
Many thanks to all the chasers who patiently waited for me to work through the pile-ups. The weather was good and I was able to work everybody (I hope) who was waiting. The reception at home wasn’t quite so good - I was late back for evening meal.
73s de Dave