Day 2; (raining/foggy)
1 summit
GM/SS-193 (Beinn an Tuirc)
QSO’s 35
Distance walked 18 km (11 ml)
Activator points 1pt
Distance driven 427 ml (687 km)
1 S2S
1 First activated summit
5 ticks on legs
1 broken coax (on the spot repair)
A long drive to get to these summits that I can see from my home QTH (35 miles as the crow flies) but well worth the numb rear end sitting driving for 4½ hours each way and the 31 km walk. By the way I walk in kilometers and drive in miles - maybe just me!
The terrain between SS-200 and SS-230 was a bit to be desired with a steep climb chewing deep heather in places while using the same to haul myself uphill. The descent from SS-230 was down a forest break full of deer and that is probably where I got the tick on my legs even though I had my trousers tucked inside my socks - too warm for the gaiters.
The rest of the routes were quite straight forward with SS-193 being right next to a wind farm so it was 8.5 km of stone road and the last 500m or so over peat hags to the summit - when I could see it.
Thanks to all the chasers that made the trip all the more worth while and thanks to Gerald G4OIG who managed to hunt me down on SS-230 on 40m when I couldn’t get a phone signal to put a self spot on. Mike G6TUH also gets the honour of being the first to chase the virgin summit of SS-193.
I did hope to activate more summits but the wx just got worse as the day went on so I decided to head the 200 miles back home and was a bit miffed when I looked over and it had cleared up over the water to Kintyre. But at least I got the 4 furthest summits ticked off the ‘round tuit’ list.
Many thanks for four new summits. I was a bit annoyed with myself as I thought I had missed one but it seems not. The area seems to be remarkably remote for somewhere so close to a populated area but I guess that your four hundred miles of driving sums up the reason. I look forward to your next trip into the wilderness.
Very well done Neil. It’s not an easy part of the world to get anywhere fast, on the road and certainly not by foot. Pity that I missed you on the Friday evening for SS-206, but I had to go out as you know. Not as though I am saying anything about the draw of seeing 4 wee lassies (Kathryn Tickell and the Side) being better than trawling the noise on 40m for your signal…
I think the only way to drive the road around to Kintyre is to be totally chilled. That’s what I did when I drove to Kennacraig last year to sail over to Islay. It would have been good to have had some extra time to travel south on the way back and activate a few Kintyre summits, but it it wasn’t to be - my pass-out was only for a limited period. I haven’t been down to the Mull since 1971, so a visit is long overdue. At least I now have a few SOTA Completes to look forward to when I do get there.
By the way I walk in kilometers and drive in miles - maybe just me!
No I think it’s people of certain age, our age! Living in the UK where road signs give distances in miles, driving in miles makes sense. Walking in kms, as I do, says we grew up with 1:50000 OS maps. You probably do heights in metres as well.
What’s drives some people to distraction is the UK’s continued use of mixed units. Beer and milk comes in pints, distances driven in miles, distances walked in kilometres, carpet in sq. m, masts in feet, cable lengths in metres, whisky in 70cl bottles, fuel consumption in miles/gallon but fuel is sold in litres.
Well done on those summits. Mull of Kintyre is one hell of a long way from anywhere in the UK. We had a family holiday in Macrahanish in 1999. Not quite 4hrs driving North from the Liverpool area followed by 4 hours driving South down the peninsula. We almost ended up where we started but a bit further West! Marvellous place.
What’s drives some people to distraction is the UK’s continued use of
mixed units. Beer and milk comes in pints, distances driven in miles,
distances walked in kilometres, carpet in sq. m, masts in feet, cable
lengths in metres, whisky in 70cl bottles, fuel consumption in
miles/gallon but fuel is sold in litres.
Yes, that’s really confusing. A bit of a mess…
Cheers,
And Andy re metrification - work in both systems without any real problems except inches and feet (but just as well I’m not involved in the space industry as per our Amercican cousins you never know the consequences (;>). Having been using mm,cms,metres for so long that I find it difficult to relate to inches and feet. Though I also struggle with cms which I have to convert to mm to get a perspective of the size (just the type of work I do - measurements in mil & metres). Don’t really see the point of cm’s though in the same context what’s the point of feet except to walk on (:>)
Well, we know what it all means and that’s the important part.
In reply to GM4COX:
Being an Architect with a career that has spanned the “changeover” from imperial to metric, I am able to visualise distances in both. However, I also have some difficulty with centimetres as we always work in millimetres, yet they teach centimetres in school.
I have a client that will actually walk out a distance toe to heel to get a measurement in feet (not sure whether he has measured his shoe) and then converts it mentally to metres… and he runs an international company!
As I remember it, the SI settled on recommending mm and metres but retained cm as a permitted option…just as the pint was retained as a permitted option. I have never been able to understand why the centimetre is not used more, it makes no sense to me to jump two orders of magnitude between primary units - and as it happens, my little finger nail is exactly a centimetre wide which is occasionally useful for guesstimating measurements! Anyway, my formal education bridged Imperial, cgs, mks and SI and I am fairly fluent in all of them, so I’m one of those people who will take a kilometre if you give me an inch!
Don’t forget the gill measurement of shots of spirits in British pubs! Over here on the “Continent”, it’s not such plain sailing with SI units as one might imagine. In Germany (and many other countries), TVs and Computer screens, tyres (or should that be “tires”?), and even heating- and water-pipes are all in inches. Buying wood for carpentry/building purposes in Germany, sizes are in millimeters, but in Italy sizes are in centimeters, which earned me some strange looks when I first ordered wood sized 100 * 60 in Italy. On another tack, my first degree was in Astrophysics, and most of the professionals would work in CGS units, so astronomical distances would most often be expressed in centimeters. Not so easy to visualize 4.0e18 cm to the nearest star…
In reply to G4OIG:
I was thinking on young students like my daughter (11) which are these days struggling at school with exercises about converting units like square meters to square centimeters or square milimeters and so on…
I wonder whether today’s students in UK and US have to deal with these decimal system conversions as well as imperial system conversions and imperial to decimal plus decimal to imperial…
Converting Kilolitres to gallons, squared inches to squared meters, pounds/squared inch to Newton/squared mm, for instance…
They’re not taught imperial units nowadays. My kids have few concepts of imperial measurements apart from pints (beer) and miles.
However, the units switching is only a perceived problem for people who don’t have to do it regularly. Much as though we all learn how to judge the rate of closure of an approaching car when we are learning to cross a road as a child, we don’t think of it as calculus. We don’t subjectively think of dy/dx of distance vs. time! The mix of units just comes naturally.
Having been through school round that time, I tend to swap and change units (particularly of length) a mite freely, depending on which ones suit the situation.
For instance, I figure my car’s fuel consumption in miles per litre…
For instance, I figure my car’s fuel consumption in miles per litre…
Which is entirely logical since the pump gives you litres (say 50), the odometer gives you miles (say 400), so on the fly 8 mpl. Could not be easier and any other unit would be necessary only if comparison were needed and the relevant data was (were?) in different units.
The same principle applies with maps and travel; driving in UK in miles, walking in km - unless still using 1 inch maps
I too am of the generation that changed units repeatedly (imperial, cgs, mks, SI) and it doesn’t bother me what I work in. However there is a rule - NEVER EVER convert mid-task.
For instance, I figure my car’s fuel consumption in miles per litre…
I don’t for the reason that it results in a narrow band of figures and you are working mentally with a decimal point, for example in winter your car may do 7.2mpl and in summer 7.8mpl. I prefer much larger figures such as 33mpg and 36mpg. I can’t actually recall car manufacturers marketing vehicles in the UK giving mpl figures… but then I haven’t bought a new car for many years!
Furlongs are for the horse brigade. We in the professions in the building industry prefer chains… and yes, I have actually surveyed with one, left it in the long grass on the survey site and had to go back to find it. I probably had a junior moment - it was very along time ago!
Not being a particular fan of cricket I wouldn’t know Colin. I was put off the game by being hit on the forehead with the ball when trying to take a high angled catch into the sun.
I only ever used a chain for surveying when I worked in an Architects’ office in the summer of 1971. The practice was a little behind the times - tee squares, drawing boards on benches raised up on bricks wrapped in tracing paper, tall stools for seating. No wonder I had a bad back. I never did see another chain after that - everything was taped.
Times move on and things change, but the enjoyment of walking the hills never will. I am sure Neil has vivid memories of his experience in Kintyre and whether he logged it in miles or kilometres is totally irrelevant. It’s what remains in the memory that is important.
But at least I got the 4 furthest summits ticked off the ‘round tuit’ list.
