G/SE-012
I believe that PPPPPP might have originally been a military acronym ( Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance ) and today I managed to demonstrate how effective poor planning actually is.
When reading activation reports of summits in other countries they are frequently littered with descriptions of bashing through undergrowth and attaching wires to convenient trees littered around the summit. For someone who has spent most of his activations trying to keep a mast in the air a wooded activation sounded quite easy - short walk from the campsite, nice views what could go wrong…….well what did go wrong is that my choice of antenna - a 20/40/60 linked dipole on top of a 7m mast was decidedly sub optimal. There is only one path to the trig point and path is a little optimistic it is more of a space with less brambles. The trees are really stunted at about 5m and are ideally positioned to tangle any passing wires. The take off on 2m is great -providing have arranged a MM contact in the channel.
Attempt no 1 involved not managing to put the mast up with the linked dipole. Didn’t even manage to connect the antenna. Attempt number 2 was 2m only to find a totally dead band. ( I did think I might be pushing my luck on a Monday Lunchtime on the Isle of Wight ). This also involved retrieving the ladder line from a gorse bush.
The Isle of Wight is currently incredibly dry so attempt 3 involved just laying the antenna on the floor - and I finally got one in the log. Attaching the dipole to the mast and propping it up a tree helped a bit and I had 2 in the log….and nothing else on 40m At this point the antenna fell off the mast propped against the tree and was now just out of reach, convenient for changing the position of the link… . Using the mast as a big hook finally worked and the antenna came down enough to change the links to get onto 20m and finally get the last two in the log…. On this occasion after an hour with thorns in my legs and fingers it was time to go with just the 4 contacts …. and the funny thing is at the Pub I read the summit notes which told me that space for antennas was difficult…. At the camper at the bottom of the hill was my not very random wire antenna which would have worked perfectly on the summit…..
So activation no 226 and it turns out that despite 10 years experience reading the summit notes might be useful….
Equipment 7m mast linked dipole, KX2, FT 270 J Pole ladder line
73. Paul - and thanks to those chasing on a quiet Monday lunchtime
Emily ( daughter no 2 ) and Woody before they retreated from the summit.