I’m sure a few of you will have discovered this website before but for those that haven’t seen it go and have a look at http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org
These are simply stunningly useful computer generated panoramas using SRTM data. From the big list (there’s about 200 hills listed) you can get a panorama which allows you to identify all the hills you can see. Many of the popular SOTA Marilyns have panoramas available.
What astounded me is just how many hilltop line-of-sight (LOS) paths you can identify. I’ve had some good views on my summit activations but the normal seeing is only around 30 miles or so. This site enables you to find much longer paths that would require exceptional seeing conditions. Modern narrowband 3cms gear works over non-LOS paths quite well but being able to identify SOTA LOS summits is bound to be useful for starting out. For example, Merrick in Dumfries and Galloway is LOS to Snowdon, Cross Fell, Blencathra, Ben Lomond, and Ben Lawers to name a few. Of course when I was up it I could only see a few metres. 5 activators with microwave gear could qualify their summits simply by working the others without looking for fixed stations.
My own 3cms gear is progressing nicely, the LO is working and I hope to have the TX running soon. I know that Jack GM4COX is very keen on some 3cms activations and I hope we can get a few more GM stations with microwave gear out during the better weather. Ha! Better weather would be nice. Every summit I’ve been up since the middle of December has either had snow on it or it’s snowed and hailed whilst I’ve been out. This winter has been so different to last winter.
I checked with the guy who runs the website that he was happy with me placing a link here… I wanted to make sure that the sudden influx of requests wouldn’t give his webserver any grief. So enjoy the hard work that went in to producing these views.
Andy
MM0FMF