On 20 October I arranged to meet a radio friend (MW0KXN) to accompany him on one of my local summits whilst he was in the area. Due to a slight c@@k up on my part I managed to take a VHF to the summit with a flat battery! It was no major hassle as I was principally out for the walk and a natter with Kevin. Walk 1; 0 pts.
Yesterday my wife and I decided to go for a walk to prepare for the excesses of Christmas dinner. She’s never been to the summit of Gisborough Moor (G/TW-003), so that was our chosen destination. I knew time was likely to be restricted, so didn’t bother taking a radio. I did explore a new route however. It rained during the drive there, but cleared up in time for the walk. It was wet underfoot and the views were best described as grey. Walk 2; 0 pts.
Today I decided that it was high time to actually dedicate some effort to SOTA! So I took the FT-857 and a stove to heat a coffee and noodles. The 7 mile drive to the start of the walk along untreated icy and snow covered roads was slightly interesting. That first skid is always the most informative as realisation dawns that the drive will take slightly longer than expected (that’s my excuse for missing my alert time anyway - nothing to do with the nice warm bed I’d left). What a difference 24 hours makes. Today I was treated to blue skies, good visibility, some snow underfoot and fun on the radio.
First contact was a S2S as well
. I ran out of time again so sorry I didn’t manage to get onto 20m. I did drop into the WAB net to thank them for being a reliable source of contacts over the year.Best wishes to all (is this an early New Year’s resolution to take more pictures? - we’ll see
). Walk 3; 1pt 
