I saw an alert for Richard G4TGJ on Friday 10th February for G/SP-005 at 1130utc. I thought it would be fun to try for a CW S2S.
The journey to the Queens Arms in Litton takes about 45 mins from home via Settle and Stainforth. I’d got my gear ready the night before, so it meant that after my wife and youngest son had left for the day, and I’d done my morning household chores, I was ready to set off with my eldest son at around 9am.
As we got we got above Stainforth we were pretty much in cloud, I was describing the view of Pen y Ghent G/NP-010 to my son as we went past, we could see nothing! Dropping off the cliff (feels like that!) into Halton Gill, the visibility improved again. The forecast had been for 50mph wind gusts and drizzle.
I parked up at the side of the road near the Queens Arms pub. We headed through the farm yard, and up the bridleway. Thankfully the wind wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the forecast had suggested. The walk was a bit of a trudge to be honest and the drizzle was just that stuff that gently gets you wetter and wetter, even though you don’t really notice it whilst it’s happening.
I’d taken my newly repaired (bodged!) 5 band dipole, which had been damaged on G/NP-028 a couple of weeks ago. I’d not actually tested the antenna, so I’d packed my Blinky SWR meter. Blinky showed a workable, but not great SWR. I’d set up using the wall for shelter and using guys on 7m pole (I use guys if it’s windy, rather than just relying on the antenna elements and back guy to hold the antenna up).
It was just after 1100utc when I was ready to opearate. Richard’s alert was for 1130, so I thought I’d try to qualify first, and then hunt Richard down, before packing up. I had my son to think about as it was cold, wet and windy. My son had not taken his expensive camera on this outing, so he didn’t really have much to keep him entertained besides looking at my RBN hits on his phone.
I set up for 17m and had just sent out a CQ on 18.088MHz when my phone beeped and it was a HamAlert notification for Richard on 30m. I decided to quickly swap on to 30m. Tuning to Richard’s spotted frequency, I could hear him strongly so I gave him a call, we worked with good signals each way for a nice S2S contact. I decided to stay on 30m as I couldn’t be bothered to leave the shelter of the wall to change the links on the antenna. In all, I had 12 QSOs on 30m. Once the callers had dried up and after no response to a single CQ call, I gave up on 30m. I asked my son how he was and he said he was happy for me to operate for a bit longer, so I swapped on to 17m. I managed another 8 QSOs on 17m, so I was happy with my tally of 20 QSOs. Qualifying with CW meant completing another ticket for entry for the EA2IF memorial key, taking my number of tickets up to 4 (as far as my maths go, I think I’ve got 20 scoring CW activations in the qualifying period).
After packing up, we pretty much ran down the hill, I was trying to warm up and get out of the horrible weather as quickly as possible! The lengths you have to go to to help with somebody else’s S2S score!! Richard @G4TGJ, please can you activate in nicer weather from now on? 
The radio I used was an LNR Precision MTR-3B with an 800mAh 3S lipo for power. QSO of the day was a surprise call by Ben @GW4BML on 30m. Thanks for QSO Ben!
73, Colin
Soggy at the G/NP-031 trig point
