Lake District Trip mid September

I activated Binsey G/LD-041 and was surprised to see a coffee van at the start of the hill. Coffee and cake before and after a climb :slight_smile:

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I too was surprised to see it there when I activated Binsey in mid August. Iā€™m used to seeing ice-cream vans at the most popular G/LD summits. It seems the second-tier-popular summits are attracting mobile vendors now.

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Marek

I have always found an EE signal on every summit In the Lakes Iā€™ve been on, although you might just have to walk a little way the summit on one or two hills to get a signal.

David ~M6GYU and Iā€™ll be activating CW one or two days in the Lakes this coming week.

In case some havenā€™t heard, this move from OfCom (the UK regulator) to make the 4 UK cell providers to share their networks in rural areas to improve coverage irrespective of which provider you are with, has made some progress. This could be especially relevant to areas like the Lake District.

Mobile coverage obligations - Ofcom

73 Ed.

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Itā€™s not made much progress down here in the Cotswolds, where there are still plenty of valleys with poor coverage unless youā€™re on the right network for that particular valley. Uley and Woodchester are our oft-frequented local not-zones. :wink:

Youā€™ll need to check the Ofcom website for which areas are included in the action and as per the news announcement, this is just a report on progress, completion is no doubt a couple of years away.

My experience in the lake district was that some areas had no coverage at all, from any provider - so for those situations, this network sharing option wont help.

73 Ed.

Iā€™ve been using band20 capable phones on EE since Summer 2021. Iā€™ve found 2 places where I have not had a signal. Linn of Dee car park a few weeks back and Craster Harbour, Northumberland. Linn Of Dee requires a km or so drive to get a signal again. Craster has a sharp height gain from the sea to the plateau before the signal re-appears. Summits have a viable internet connection but you may need to move a few m about to find it. Iā€™ve had summits when my phone sat on my bag on the ground has no connection. But the phone about 1m AGL and the signal is fine.

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Slow progress in Teesdale, I know the location of 2 new masts, one of which is enabled, one isnā€™t, and there are still an awful lot of not spots, even on the relatively main road up the valley. At the moment there is a slow fibre roll out (the fibre isnā€™t slow but its progress up the dale isā€¦) and I am guessing that the hold up on the new mast might well be downstream connectivity. All of this is linked to the roll out of the UK ā€œEmergency Services Networkā€ which in effect will replace the UK Airwave system used by the emergency services with something linked to EEā€™s 4G system. Donā€™t hold your breath the implementation deadline was 2019 and the latest guess is 2026 ishā€¦ This I believe will require quite a lot of the 4G not spots filling in so in effect there is coverage - at least on the roads for the emergency servicesā€¦
Finally I was one of those sad people that followed the link to the OfCOM report and looked at the page where they show the ā€œtest driving routeā€. the resolution of the map is awful but the test drive does not seem to have moved far from major trunk roads - and certainly not in the rural bits. I bet most SOTA activators could have made a better test mapā€¦ so as with many things I have a 25% confidence rating in OfCOMs assessment of 93% coverage. <Donā€™t assume you will get mobile coverage - but it is improving>. 73. Paul (No mobile coverage at homeā€¦)

This would depend on how ā€œcoverageā€ is defined. The Devil will be in the detail.

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A bloke with a receiver on a pole wandered around waving the pole in the air and if the receiver picked up any sort of signal for more than a millisecond they counted it ā€œcoveredā€ ā€¦ :smiling_imp:

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Never mind the amount of phone signal. You carry a radio in the hills donā€™t you?.. :radio: :laughing: :laughing:
PS. `iā€™ll go nowā€¦ :wave:t5:

Hi Guys,

Third time lucky, I had to postpone activation on Saturday and Sunday due to weather, although it turn out that late Sunday afternoon was quite pleasant.

So, tomorrow Monday if forecast does not change again we will attempt activate Grizedale Pike G/LD-015.

Looking at propagation forecast it couldnā€™t be worst day G3 with Kp=7 is forecasted. Itā€™s most likely I will have to relay solely on 2m FM but I will try HF too (7-14-28 MHz SSB). We will see how it goes.

I hope to meet you on the bands.

73 Marek
G/SP9TKW

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I donā€™t think that is what they are doing. The documents from your link talk about giving each operator a target of how much land area to cover in the UK as a whole with additional targets for each of the nations. They are not doing this by sharing networks (although they do share base stations sites and masts already).

An additional part of this is using UK Government funding to use some of the sites owned by the Home Office for the emergency services network to be used by operators. Again, Iā€™m not sure that the operators will be sharing their networks.

I may well have missed something though.

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