First attack on the LD's!

Hi All

Just a word of thanks to all those wonderful chasers who made our recent G4MD/G4OIG expedition to start bagging the Lakes summits such a worthwhile experience, and to David G6LKB and Clifford M6LKB who added a highlight to a pretty dismal day by coming out to meet us on Kirkby Moor despite the awful weather!

Apologies for the lack of 80m activity - my doublet suffered terminal damage on the first summit and left me with only the 60m dipole. Also for the uncharacteristic 2m FM “smash and grabs” by myself on Sunday’s first and last summits, due to the aforesaid damage on the first and the apalling weather and rapidly descending darkness on the last.

On Monday, I had completely miscalculated the ascent time for Grayrigg Forest, and the late arrival on the summit compounded by the overwhelming response by so many chasers resulted in us deciding to cancel the final summit. This enabled a much more relaxed day, which combined with the fantastic weather and the continued chaser support made it a real joy.

Like the man said (nearly…)

We’ll be back!

73 de Paul G4MD

I would just like to echo Paul’s thoughts. The support on all of the bands that we worked was absolutely fantastic, even though some of the summits that we activated were not at all rare. It was a shame that the weather curtailed the use of 4m and 23cms on Sunday and there was only a single 70cms contact made that day. Having the beam at 1.8m all day didn’t help.

The ascent to Grayrigg Forest was very much an unknown quantity and Paul had not factored in my snail-like progress - some days the old legs take time to get going. We very nearly didn’t do any activations on Monday - trying to judge where the tarmac was beneath a thick carpet of leaves was difficult on the minor road to the first parking spot and at one point I misjudged and we slipped sideways into a mud filled ditch. Fortunately the Quattro took it all in its stride and I managed to reverse out of our predicament.

Apologies for the limited activation from Gummer’s How. I’m well used to rain and wind in various measures on an activation, but these elements together in the dark were a whole new experience. It was facinating seeing the rain swirling round in the light from my headlamp, but I can’t say I am that keen to repeat the experience.

73, Gerald G4OIG

In reply to G4OIG:

A big thanks to both of you for the very nice QSO’s from three of the summits you activated on Sunday. Unfortunately I had to leave the shack, so I missed the last one.

Four LD summits in one day takes quite a lot of effort to say the least, let alone the travelling involved for both of you.

It was a shame that Paul’s multi-band HF aerial had broken, but what a good demonstration of how good the 5MHz band is when it is working well. I sincerely hope that the powers that be extend the current 5MHz experimental period beyond mid 2010, or maybe even make the current channels (or whatever suits the MOD), permanently available to UK amateurs, via a renewable NOV. By the way, I would also support an allocation at 5MHz across Europe for NVIS propagation, although I feel a lot of thought needs to be put into the frequencies chosen so as to avoid it simply becoming just another “DX” band & losing out on the NVIS properties & relatively reliable near to mid distance communication it provides.

But back to the subject in hand…

I had to take my 2m yagi down due to the wind here in Blackburn, goodness knows what it was like in LD land, so a big thank you to both of you for making the effort. I’m sure I heard mention of a very early 01:45 wake up time for someone :wink:

I am sure I am not alone in being pleased to see both of you activating as a team again :slight_smile:

Here’s to the next one!

Best 73,

Mark G0VOF