Congratulations to Rick M0RCP on his 200th SOTA activation with his activation today of G/SP-017 Billinge Hill. I have had the pleasure of working Rick many times, even on 80m CW, but today’s 2m FM QSO was especially nice as I would normally have been at work & missed the activation completely
I did wonder why you picked such a small summit for such a milestone, but for a quick activation while passing through the area, they don’t come much easier than Billinge Hill. If you can cope with the VHF QRM that is! HI!
First of all apologies to any chasers that were expecting me on HF. Things started off badly this morning with a power cut in our part of Leeds just before the alarm was due to go off. Since both the kettle and the house lights were out of service (it was still dark at 6:00am) I decided to await developments in bed. If I’d realised how things were going to unfold I’d have gone without breakfast and used a head torch to pack the car. By the time the power was restored I was running so late that I hit the early morning rush hour traffic on the Leeds ring road, which in turn meant that I got stuck in the rush hour traffic on the M62 in Manchester. The overal effect of all this was that a journey that should have taken an hour and ten minutes took almost exactly three hours.
Given that I had an appointment later in the day I therefore decided to do a quick 2m FM activation using just the handheld. It was a lovely day despite the northerly wind and the air temperature hovering around zero. In just under half an hour I managed to get 9 QSOs in the log, not bad I think for 10:00am on a work day!
I didn’t exactly choose SP-017 to celebrate my 200th summit (come to think of it I don’t think I noticed when I did my 100th) but I have been planning to do for some time. It was only when I realised how close it was to Barbara’s parent’s house that I realised I could combine it with today’s other activities. The views from SP-017 on a day like today are pretty amazing considering it’s just a pimple really. I imagine I’ll be going back again regularly now I know how to get there.
The other reason for visiting it is that I now have only two SP summits to do SP-013 and SP-001.
