My 2nd SOTA activation, was camping at the bottom of the summit so it was kind of rude not too.
Set off on the walk up with my wife and dog. She had her kindle and the pack lunch, i had the radio and dog treats.
Had read the other reports about VHF is not good but had the handheld anyway but it was no use, heard nothing. So got out the IC-705 and the slidewinder and whip and started on 40m and got one contact, then nothing. Switched to 20m and then the QSO’s started to come in with a few S2S.
After 20 mins on the air the wife was cold and the packed lunch was gone between her and the dog, so packed up and we continued the walk around the summit and back down the valley for a well earned pint.
Learned a few things on the summit about kit and set up, its differnent to POTA which I mainly do.
Obi standing guard of me, or maybe guarding the pack lunch from me
hahaha yea! Been there and done that! you will soon learn what you need, and what you dont… ive really minimilzed my VHF SOTA kit, and use a HandHeld (usually an FT4X) sotabeams filter, 6M pole and spectrum comms slim G… I log on my phone (VK portalog) and dont need anything else really!!
For HF i use an EFHW, and a Xeigu G106… stick to the the bands that the antenna is resonant on (40 and 20M) and i can keep that kit to a minimum too!
Conversely, I went the opposite direction making improvements to my VHF (and UHF) kit over the early years of my SOTA career, with further changes and additions more recently. I enjoyed activating Kisdon on the higher frequencies. Running 25 watts of SSB and a 5 element yagi fed with decent coax certainly helped me make contacts. When I read reports about the summit being poor for VHF I just smile… when there’s a will, there’s a way on Kisdon. I’ve had stiffer challenges on VHF up in Scotland with a more sparse amateur population and small hills screened by some whoppers.
Well done the activation James. It looks like your XYL has a similar tolerance in relation to activation time to my XYL. On account of that issue and problens with her toes, mine now won’t come up any hills with me. Maybe for the best.
In Derbyshire (and other places), steps are built into the walls to direct walkers and prevent the walls being climbed. Good fun getting over with a heavy backpack… almost as good as climbing a stile over a deer fence.
‘Modern’ sheep breeds are much bigger than those kept when most of the walls in the UK were built and so can scale bigger walls and cause more damage when they fail.
Its time consuming and costly building walls and/or repairing them so adding some netting to the top makes good sense.
Cos the local sheep have learnt how to climb walls. I joke not, a Herdwick can scale a 6foot wall. They run at the wall and launch themselves upwards, like a pole vaulter. Then they stand on the top with a grin on their face before jumping down the other side.
