G/LD-037 Little Mell Fell Activation Report

Originally, I’d toyed with the idea of going to Watch Hill (G/LD-054) today, after a shift change in work meant I didn’t do it earlier in the week. However, given I had a full day today my attention instead turned to Little Mell Fell (G/LD-037), especially as I woke up to sunshine and hardly any wind in Carlisle.

Today’s aim was to try and do a HF activation, so bag duly packed, I set off in the car down the M6 and about 40 minutes later found myself parked up at the bottom. Looking up I did wonder what I’d let myself in for, but it was too late to turn back.

A steady accent followed, with some glorious views out over Ullswater and the rest of the Lake District. I was at the summit by 12:05 which was ahead of my 12:30 alert. The linked dipole was setup for 40m and set up, after a quick self-spot I began calling CQ and soon had a pileup, and worked stations in Spain, France, Belgium, Poland, Denmark Sweden, and England. I did hear a someone attempting a S2S contact but they kept fading into the noise unfortunately.

Once things had dried up I moved over to 2M FM and found GM4VFL/P working a summit in Scotland, then spotted myself and had a few contacts fairly locally. While packing away the dipole I set the handheld up to monitor and just caught M0RSF/P calling CQ SOTA and followed him to work him S2S as well.

I definitely need to get some sort of guying kit for the SOTA Beam to work on summits like this with nothing to attach it to other than the trig point, and before long I can see me needing something better than the FT-818s internal battery.

Thanks to all stations worked today, especially to those of you chasing while you can’t activate in your countries.

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/90408388_10220294808951711_4329464683774869504_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_oc=AQm0sYzAIZSMJ5NDqXAV72Ju9gcC5q7aRsThnS8l1NGwD_d5hnO64gJtBO8yQKHANAU&_nc_ht=scontent-lht6-1.xx&oh=445c46f3f360677e808d0d9b10643c9a&oe=5E9BB546

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/90399963_10220294807111665_1423202095737077760_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_oc=AQkdKSmHYQ5yNfxfMfCrQ190tKLgqYsvFSk-qFHy3iKqqxPaVvRo3DbLXyKc2D3oJjQ&_nc_ht=scontent-lht6-1.xx&oh=77819c2d49eb9e607e7ce3db28b5b074&oe=5E992BEB

4 Likes

Congratulations on your successful activation!

The SOTA Compact 10m mast, with the top 3 sections removed, is pretty bomb proof even in high winds when used with my 80/60/40/20 SOTABeams quad-bander.

Mark.

1 Like

Thanks for the S2S yesterday while I was activating G/LD-050 Gummers How. Just want to make sure that you logged my call sign correct M0RSF/P

73 Chris M0RSF

Was good to work you as well Chris, I managed to get you logged correctly on the summit, but I didn’t type your call in correctly when transcribing the log. That will teach me to double check in future.

73