It’s been a pretty miserable week, back to work after a week off skiing and I incubated a body full of viral nasties just after getting back. I felt so dire on Thursday I would have given you a fiver to finish me off with a brick. But then Friday felt like crawling out from under a black cloud, maybe, just maybe I could manage a tiny little walk on Saturday? The fact that the cold weather has broken here and it looked to be a prefect still, mild day was too much to resist.
Moncreiffe hill just outside perth was the target, only about 170m easy ascent, and I’d never been there. There’s a handy parking space provided which was reasonably quiet when I got there, and I never saw a soul on the way up, which starts as a nice meander through trees:
eventually it starts to get a bit more hill like with a reminder that it is still sort of winter:
“sort of”, the car was saying +10C on the way here!
The summit is an iron age hill fort and the views are stunning: To the north over Perth:
To the west to the “real” hills (the real men go to do SOTA there, not us wimps (yet)):
To the south where I may well end up real soon now (thats east and west Lomond):
and back up the river Tay to Dundee:
I set up just to the east of the summit in a sheltered hollow and thought I had the place to myself, over the next couple of hours every man and his dog, actually his several dogs, arrived. But I had some interesting conversations with folks about what I was doing, one chap had a relative who’d got their licence and then done nothing with it so he was very interested to hear about this SOTA idea.
The radio seemed reasonably productive with over 80 qsos on 40m/20m/17m. I did try 10m but despite it being full of huge signals and i made a pleading self spot no-one wanted me. Carolyn seemed to be doing way better than me on 17m, I could hear her ok, but no chance of breaking the pileup! Even on 7mhz it was a struggle to wave the S2S banner, I do seem to hear better than I get out, I need to try something different on the aerial front.
Someone commented that I sounded a little bit auroral, but that was my voice before it got to the microphone, even the Tesco checkout who sold me the pasty on the way there gave me a 39A report. Still, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I now feel quite chipper with my post walk dram in my hand (medicinal purposes only, you understand).
See you on the next one.
Andy
gm8oeg