G/SE-001 activation 16/02/2009

As the weather was looking a bit better than of late I decided that it was time to get the scooter out of the garage (for the first time this year) and activate my nearest hilltop, Walbury Hill G/SE-001.
It would be a chance to try out my new lightweight paddle,a paddle kit from American Morse Equipment called the DCP (dirt cheap paddle) that my XYL had bought me for Christmas. So this was intended to be a 40m CW only activation.
Before reaching the car park at the eastern end of the bridleway the road was almost blocked by the parked cars of numerous ‘Twitchers’ with their cameras and telescopes looking east for feathered friends of some sort.
Then past the ‘road closed’ sign that must have been used due to the heavy snow that was still lying in patches here and there.
The bridleway from the car park was running with melting snow so was thankful to be wearing wellington boots today.
Luckily there was no lying snow in the field in which the trig point is located.
40m was in good shape and quickly saw 14 calls in the log following Rami,OH8MNM who answered my CQ SOTA call.
Had time to spare so a listen on 60m heard a QSO on 5.3985mhz with good strong signals so decided to extend the dipole and see if there were any takers for CW.
Tried several CQ calls one channel above and one channel below 5.3985mhz but no takers. Went back to 5.3985mhz and listened to the group (a G ,a GW and a GM)in QSO for some time.
When the QSO ended called the GW ,the most recent to join the group but no reply.
So many thanks to GM3VQJ for calling in and giving me the report I needed to be sure that I was getting out OK.
This was followed by Frank G3RMD (on SSB) who spotted me on SOTA.
7 more UK callers all with excellent signals.
Non UK callers were EI7CC and LA1G for my first LA contact on 60m.
So many thanks to all who called me , to HA5TI and G3RMD for spotting ,and ON3WAB for the 60m report via the SOTA spots.
This was the first time that I took a camera with me so you can see the pics on Flickr: The Summits on the Air Photo Pool Pool
72’s , David G3RDQ/P