Well, this was very much a lastminute.com activation. I had already decided, I’d done enough radio this week.
However, as every hard bitten Radio Ham knows, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and as the 20Ah SLAB was fully charged and the FT-857 was still in the rucksack…Oh well.
I arrived at The Gun parking spot early, to find conditions extremely calm. But I knew the wind would almost certainly get up, so, I took the decision to leave the 7 Ele ZL beast in the back of the car…smart move as it 'appens.
Got set up and bungeed the antenna to the trig point. Dunno why I did this as it is probably the most exposed place on the summit.
I had promised myself, I would be off the summit by 1200z…Yeah right.
Self spotted myself on SSB and started to call cq. Most unusually, not a sausage. Carried on trying …still nowt!!! Just happened to look at the SWR reading on the rig and found it to be through the roof. Yup, I hadn’t tightened up the PL259 properly into the back of the rig. Within seconds, of doing so, I heard G0TRB and Bob G6ODU and in the space of 20 odd minutes, had worked 11 Stations including Tom M1EYP and G0RQL Don, in sunny Devon.
At 9am, QSY’d to FM where there was a steady stream of calls all morning, right up to my last QSO with G3YUX at 1447z, when it started to rain.
Worked a load of kids who were at a Scout Hut callsign M0TSR and then worked 3 of them /A with their shinny new M6 callsigns.
Also had about half a dozen S2S which was very pleasant.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable day, despite my knees being frozen solid.
The days haul …120 contacts, not bad for a summit that is 7 or 8 hundred feet lower than Shining Tor.
As usual, a big big thank you, to all the chasers who called me. A pleasure to work all of you.
73
Mike
2E0YYY
