Conachair GM/SI-098 by MM/ON4GS/P on 11/07/2017

Hi All,

For a time now I am a SOTA enthousiast, however, not actively activating a lot of summits as my Professional career tends to interfere with SOTA plans. Anyway, after testing some SOTA gear on a couple of Belgian summits, I pushed through during my last holiday in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland and activated the Conachair GM/SI-098.

The summit is actually the highest point of Hirta, an island of the St. Kilda archipelago which lies about 41 miles West of the Outer Hebrides into the Atlantic. It was already quite of a success to make landfall on the island let alone activate its summit. We got permission from the NTS to camp there for a few days. We fully realized to have a lot of luck with the WX conditions as a fellow camper indicated to have made 9 landfall attempts before he successfully could set foot on St. Kilda soil.

On the second day an effort was made to reach the top to put a signal in the air. Before reaching the top I was attacked by Great Skua’s (aka Bonxies) protecting their territory. I read about SOTA risks before, however, I don’t believe these were listed, HI. At the top, calling CQ in CW on the SOTA QRG’s for 15 mins did not render any QSO’s. After getting in an SSB QSO on a non-SOTA QRG, I was able to get in the DX cluster. I had made a major mistake not alerting myself before hand, due to sporadic internet access on the hebrides and not being sure when we would make landfall. All in all very happy to have made a successful SOTA activation on this remote island.

More information on https://stkilda.on4gs.net

73 de Gert ON4GS (infected by the SOTA virus)

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