Come out to play at 6AM they said, it will be wonderful they said, there’s Caribbean air, it will be soooo warm, and the band will be full of Australians.
What they omitted to say is that the Caribbean air really really wanted to be in Denmark, by tea time, yesterday. Oh, and that Caribbean air is really, really … moist…
So I duly got up at 5AM, and was indeed at the parking place near the masts on East Lomond GM/SS-198 full of McDonalds double sausage and egg mcmuffin by 0630. Things started to go down from there. It was pointed out to me that we couldn’t actually see the top.
The occasional view of Falkland.
From the car park its only just over a kilometer and 100m vertical but it was clear it was a challenge to get there, the wind was so bad that we had to abandon plan A of attaching the mast to the trig with the dipole nicely aimed at VK long path and instead found somewhere on the north slope to hunker down. It was just possible to put the dipole so the top was just over the brow at about 8ft agl but no higher.
And then it seemed that the VKs were making it as far round the globe to GW and north G but no further. We heard vk5pas/p and vk6nu but not loud enough for them to hear me. No chasers let them know that we were calling so we didn’t stand a chance despite a while shouting. We tried getting some of the US aligators to hear us on 40 but only got as far as them saying “the portable station?” and then just going back to CQing. So we just went back to picking up the usual SOTA chasers on 40m - thankyou, you are appreciated. One S2S with 2e0yyy/p was the hilight.
gm8oeg really enjoying the activation
By 9AM we were ready to call it a day - so far on all activations my 7AH SLAB has had more capacity than me. It became clear that as we stood up to take the aerial down it was windier. And it started to rain…
Ian doing “piglet” impersonations.
It was almost too windy to walk, as you lifted a foot it was blown to the left before you could put it down! But the view to the coast was quite atmospheric:
Well, it was fun, I’ve got to say that, I’ll no doubt do it again. Maybe I might be a bit more of a weather wuss in future though.
