After the amazing weather that we had over the bank holiday weekend, I wasn’t prepared to go back to milder weather without activating my favourite local (G/TW) summit: Cringle Moor.
I had been saving this summit for half the year, eagerly awaiting a nice sunny evening for a warm activation after work one day. Last year, I ‘wasted’ this summit by activating it in January; I nearly decked myself several times on the way and only hung around on the summit for 20 minutes before losing feeling in my hands. I was determined to have a much more relaxed activation next time.
So, after having been pried by a fellow activator to go sooner in the week rather than later, I had my tea and set off to Lord Stones Country park. It was a very enjoyable walk up, with the warm evening sun on my back and nobody else around.
Cringle Moor was one of the first summits I did, back in 2024. One thing I noticed this time is that the climb seemed pretty trivial in comparison. I’ve definitely got fitter after climbing all of these summits!
Having arrived very quickly at the summit, I had a go on 2m/70cm before setting the HF kit up. First in the log was Tom M1TJM, who was very pleased to have now completed the summit! I got a very interesting call on 70cm… more on that later…
I set up my trusty positive-V dipole and put several calls out on 20m. After calling into the abyss for ten minutes or so, I was worried that it was going to be a slow day for radio. Eventually the contacts started dripping through, first Slovakia, then Belarus. Then, all of a sudden… YY7MNQ, Venezuela! I’ve never even heard Venezuela on the radio before, never mind working them; I was ecstatic!
Later, the radio slowed down again, so when a Spanish station called in, I had time for an extended QSO in his native language. It’s always enjoyable to hear how excited people get when you speak their own language to them, and it’s even better when they know you’re a learner, so they slow down for your benefit.
We chatted on for a few minutes, and a few more stations dripped through, before I got bored and decided to switch to 15m. I was very surprised to be immediately chased by a Brazilian station on 15m!
My original goal was to get 50 QSOs on Cringle Moor, but after having got these countries, and after it started getting deceptively cold, I decided to pack up and leave while still in high spirits. I made 25 QSOs; half the original target.
Out of all the interesting stations I worked that evening, one in particular stood out:
GB2A66LB
What on earth kind of callsign is that?
The callsign was Tom, having gone through the entire NoV application process for activating laybys on the A66!
Is this the dawn of a new awards scheme - LOTA? Laybys-on-the-air?
I can’t decide which was my most cherished contact of the evening, but GB2A66LB was certainly up there in entertainment value. Perhaps one could consider such a weird callsign even rarer than a station in Venezuela or Brazil.
) and so Ofcom should do the same. You never know they’ll be issuing Japanese calls to American visitors next 
in there that I’d worked from a Scottish Munro. I thought it was a typo, but he had a chaser log to match. Get in! It was probably during a pile up and I didn’t clock it at the time.