That was fun in the end.
If you follow me on Twitter you will know I have been struggling with a knee injury for a while and only just started to venture out on a few, very easy, hills with radio kit. My interest had waned earlier this year for one reason or another but recently the need to be out on hills had resurfaced.
In the past I have managed to miss out on any SOTA days for one reason or another but the opportunity to be involved this time was too good to miss.
With how my knee is currently long walks are really out of the question and any significant decent has been causing pain. So with trepidation I decided to walk up Titterstone Clee Hill (G/WB-004).
Many of the pictures of the activations have shown beautiful views in glorious sunshine. Not mine at the beginning. Even before I arrived anywhere near the hills it was obvious I was in for a possible unpleasant activation. I did think to myself if it’s mizzling and damp I really didn’t want to go up.
I had alerted for 08:00utc so allowed plenty of time to arrive at the parking, some 80m below the summit, and ascend well before. I had the choice of climbing the short, sharp way or the longer gentle way past the radar domes. I chose the former, in for a penny. I descended the long way.
I gingerly climbed up the steep east side of the disused quarry soon arriving at the trig-point to be met with the full force of the prevailing wind that I had been sheltered by. Visibility was way down but there was no dampness to the low clouds. It is easy to find shelter from the wind on the top and chose a place to settle.
Spot the Trig-point
Windy
From my recent activations 40m seemed to be the most productive and had already decided to use my vertical. It survives high winds better than my dipoles, didn’t want to keep getting up to re-erect a collapsed pole. I can also make the vertical operate on 20 or 17m.
40m was the band to be on. Summits to summits were sometimes difficult to pull out of the pile-ups and QRM but we got there in the end. 20m was a little more relaxed, the band really wasn’t playing nicely into Europe.
In the 4 hours, or so, I activated I did a mixture of search-and pounce and alerting. Occasionally spots were showing up so fast my self-spot frequency dropped off the page.
The time went so quickly and by the time I decided to finish, because one of my batteries was getting low, I had made 124 contacts with 45 being summit-2-summit. All ssb.
There it is!
NATS radar
Still windy
Thank you to the organisers, the chasers and activators, sorry if we didn’t make contact.
For interest equipment used;
Yaesu FT-817
Home built HF-Packer amplifier @30W
40m 1/4 wave vertical/20m 1/2 wave Zeppelin
Li-Fe batteries
The knee? Stiff with no major discomfort.
Carolyn