My daughter Sarah acquired her Foundation licence via Telford & Districts Amateur Radio Society at beginning of May but didn’t get callsign until this week because of admin difficulties. Anyway, up The Wrekin, G/WB-010, we went and decided to start with 2m FM to see if 2E0YYY was tx but nothing heard. A CQ on 145.500 produced GW0AGZ followed by 2E0XYL a matter of milleseconds later.
It matters because GW0AGZ has won the prize for first QSO with my daughter Sarah, M6HBT. Sarah was not quite as tongue-tied as I was on my first SOTA activation and bagged 5 contacts + another 2 S2S: 2W0WDS/P on Y Wyddfa (Snowdon) & 2E0YYY/P on his “second” summit of The Gun.
Thankyou all for encouraging the female species in the hobby! Sarah enjoyed herself so doubtless we will see (hear!) more.
My QSO with Mike 2E0YYY revealed HF was flat and sadly this was true and nothing on 14MHz except high-power stations who couldn’t hear me.
There was a slight annoyance when more powerful stations kept tx-ing over me when I was trying to establish contact with 2W0WDS/P on GW/NW-001. Do please wait until the SOTA activator calls you and asks you to go ahead. As an activator, I don’t want to abandon a summit with too few QSO’s to qualify the summit and so I will always unpick a pile-up to the last station so chasers know that I can be relied upon to give you chaser points - the only exception being tough weather conditions and possibility of hyperthermia meainging I ought to pack up. I made two CQ calls before going QRT and I have 17 QSO’s in the log so hopefully all chasers were satisfied.
best 73s to all
Alastair / M0TYM
