Quote: “Incidentally, if you don’t wake before your alarm, you probably aren’t getting enough sleep—or you aren’t sleeping on a consistent schedule.”
BTW: I activated Helvellyn in December sitting in the snow with my back to the wind. The lack of shelter makes activating it in winter for Oldies like me a challenge to stay warm.
P.S. I like the straight key - it’s got a proper grippable knob unlike my Palm straight key. I should take the PPK but don’t like straight-keying on wonky surfaces. So much easier with the small lateral movements of my finger and thumb with the Palm Pico twin paddles.
Nice to meet you yesterday and great to see your transverter setup. The weather was really forgiving and made it rather enjoyable to work a long list of chasers while sat in the sun and snow on the top of G/LD-001.
I made it to the top of Illgill Head just in time for sunset. I had a quick look outside the tent at 22:00 after an aurora alert to my phone, but I couldn’t see anything over the top of Great Gable and Scafell Pike. However, it seemed to affect my signal reports this AM, I was getting lower SNR reports from the RBN than I would usually expect with my 3 W on 30m.
Thanks to Mark for suggesting the weekend. Looking at other alerts and knowing I only had the morning I had a look at a route into Stony Cove Pike. I met M7BIA in the carpark before his ascent to Red Screes.
It was going to be a good time to try my nearly acquired Yaesu FT-90, which had performed well in the house. I called on 145.500 and got a lot of noise with the responses, I think the receive on my copy Sotabeams MFD is still not fixed. I switched back to my handheld with half wave whip and managed to get 23 QSOs including 9 S2S with a few NW and one SS.
Looks like I’m back to the drawing board with the MFD.
Having that extra punch is definitely worth it, but it does bring complications that a handheld doesn’t suffer from! At one time (younger, fitter) I took my FT-8900R with me on to the fells the extra failure points that you get with a mobile setup compared to a plain handheld do sometimes get in the way! At least you had the handheld.
You were off like a rocket, Matthew. I just fell on my backside and bent Mrs g7kse’s walking pole. She wasn’t impressed. Time for some new winter boots.
I ended up walking down with a random bloke from Norwich who does circus stuff at festivals. Very interesting lifestyle. He was impressed with the geekery.
Glad you managed to get up to illgill head. It’s a bit of a trek but I like the view from the top of the screes. I see it just about weekly from the bottom and it’s very different up top.
I’d just finished my 2m bit when I saw you setting up. Instantly spotted the pole … The only thing I regret was to pack up the transverter before the buffoon with the drone started up flying over my head. Would have been nice to see is 13cm could confuse it.
… The only thing I regret was to pack up the transverter before the buffoon with the drone started up flying over my head. Would have been nice to see is 13cm could confuse it.