It's busy on Shining Tor!

Decided to get back in SOTA mode here after a break. Brisk walk up Shining TOR from Lay-by adj. to Cat & Fiddle, delayed setting up as it was busy with an organized walking party of 40+ people. Condx on 5MHz favoured the more distant stations, GMs very strong but struggled to to work G on CW. 40m CW good to Europe and one strong G. Think I may need to consider adding 80m to the antenna.

2m FM busy - first time I’ve tried VHF as I only put the IC-E90 in the bag as an afterthought, QSYd to 6m FM with GM7AAV, then from 6m to 70cm with G6GVI.

Thanks everyone for the contacts, also a pleasant surprise to get the winter bonus.

To John GW4BVE - were you waiting for me to vacate before you started? :wink:

73
Nick G4IRX

In reply to G4IRX:

Hi Nick. Sorry I missed you on Shining Tor. I was in Cheshire and had put the gear in the car in case I managed to get up there in the afternoon. In fact I was in the pub, not the Cat & Fiddle, while you were activating. I know it is normal to do it the other way round but at least the short walk helped to walk off the pub lunch.

After a couple contacts on 2m FM (G6LKB and M0JDK) I operated on 80m SSB and had 19 contacts, with 18 of those being with active chasers. Thanks chaps and thanks to John M0JDK for the spot. Two summits to summits were with Dave G6LKB on LD-049 and Robin GM7PKT on SS-084. It was great to work you both and thanks for yet another new one Robin.

It was not crowded for me on the summit. I met a lady descending as I was walking up and a guy walked past while I was setting up.

There have been some “improvements” since I was last up there. The muddy area around the bench is now paved and the path heading north is now “flagged”, albeit with very nice stone. The contrast to walking nearly 1Km through bog to get to the Creigiau Gleision ridge the day before was amazing. I didn’t even get my boots muddy on this one!!!

The weather was very pleasant with a light breeze. I think I could see some some showers over the Cheshire plain, but they didn’t reach the summit.

73 John GW4BVE