I am heading down to Cornwall shortly (about 3:00 am) and will be activating G/DC-004 Hensbarrow Beacon and G/DC-006 Carnmenellis. Details are a bit sketchy so I have not posted an alert.
Likely to be 40/80 SSB on Hensbarrow Beacon around 10:00 - 11:00 and 40/80/2 SSB and 2 Fm from Carnmenellis around 13:00. These times could be very variable.
Listen out for M0ZZO, 2E0XIS and 2E0WMG. We will also be on HF SSB on Saturday all day from around St Austel but unlikely to activate anything SOTA.
Great stuff James, DC-004 is one of four DC summits I am short of and one of only nine for all the English summits. Helen GW7AAU and myself will be on that same summit sometime between the 15th and the 22nd of this month along with hopefully all the other DC summits. I look forward to hearing you from on the top and maybe you could let us know how you found it afterwards to give us some idea of what to expect.
We got to DC-004 around 10:00. Parked up on parking spot at side of road - loads of room. Walked along an easy path (a bit soggy but OK) to hummock with trig point. dropped back down off of the little hummock and strapped pole to fence and set up inverted V for 80m. Took a while to get the desired 4 contacts and we left after an hour or so with 6 calls in the log - none of them regular sota chasers.
Moved on to DC-006, parked on verge and struggled to find the footpath. Spoke to a very friendly local resident who pointed us in the right direction. Even when on the footpath it is so overgrown that it is invisible. Once the footpath is exhausted it is a matter of picking your way to the top through the tangled gorse, bracken and bramble. It is only calf high at the moment but in high summer it could be nasty.
There are plenty of spots to set up on at the top and we found a rather comfortable base from a ruined building.
We decided to try out Kevan 2E0WMG’s rucksack special on 2 FM. This was a pleasant surprise compared to my last Cornwall trip. We worked a dozen stations in quick succession - mostly 2E’s and M3’s. 3 years ago it took me an hour to qualify a hill in Cornwall. After about an hour the weather started to turn so we headed back down. I will be picking gorse and bramble out of my socks for weeks but I have now activated every English SOTA summit south of Raw Head.