This weekend I met up with @MM7DCD at Cairn Table in Ayrshire for another activation. It was a fairly damp morning with a chance of missing the rain.
Roughly a year ago I almost failed an activation at Corse Hill on 2M FM. I took the decision after this to pick up a Xiegu X6100 and attempt an HF activation - I’ve been focussing more on HF for my activations since and enjoying pileups each time. When I walk with Douglas he works exclusively on 2M so for the Cairn Table walk I left my handhelds at home and decided to work on HF only for the first time.
The walk to the summit was a really pleasant one and took us just over an hour, the walk reports online are very positive and I can see why. There were some boggy sections but nothing that stopped is enjoying the day, my socks remained dry with only walking shoes on.
At the summit I got the bandhopper (20 & 40) up and started on 40M. I brought my LiFePo4 battery to get 10W out of the Xiegu as I was aware propagation conditions were not great. I called for 10 minutes on 40M with not a single response, I did hear Steve MM0XPZ making an attempt but we were not able to exchange callsigns. I posted a spot and in the space of 25 minutes following this made three contacts - G0FEX, EI6FR and M0JLA/P who was on GW/SW-005 Fan Fawr.
I switched to 20M posting a spot immediately and again over the space of 30 minutes only achieved a further two contacts with OH3GZ and ON2LVC/P. I was relieved to have qualified the activation, but surprised at how poor the conditions were.
Walk back down was also very pleasant with the sun coming out on the way down. I’ll happily revisit Cairn Table in the future, I’d consider even taking one of my children along for their first walk.
Douglas however had a completely different experience to me, I’ll invite @MM7DCD to comment on his activation! 
) so managed a healthy 25w operation.
