The bald facts, then the rant (I bet you can hardly wait!)
SW-033, the Wentwood, activated on five megs on Friday, Oct. 7th, not much activity on the band so only six contacts. Many thanks to them and for the posts.
I like the higher summits, they stick up a bit, you can hardly miss them! The tiddlers, though, that’s an entirely different thing…
Well, to start with, I could have sworn that OS sheet 171 was in my collection - the evening before setting out, packing my gear, I found it wasn’t! I had it covered on a museum piece, Bartholomew’s Half-Inch map number 13, published in 1963! Fine, I thought, I’ll navigate to it using that, and sketch the summit from Get-a-Map. Good plan - not! Half the side roads we passed were not on the map, at times I wasn’t even sure where I was to a couple of miles, not my usual standard, but eventually I spotted a sign to Wentwood. Eureka! Wonder of wonders, I even found the parking spot - and the path - and a firebreak leading to the summit - and a jungle of mature conifers standing in a bed of windfall branches - but not the summit! Well, I was certain that I was in the activation zone, and pretty sure I was no more than 100 metres from the trig point, but after a lot of bush-wacking I gave up on finding the trig point, set up the gear and activated.
In future I will stick to bald summits where you can see the trig point a couple of miles away, having to fall over it before you see it is not my thing at all!
Nothing else done, rain stopped play yesterday, and we nearly went hang-gliding taking down the tent this morning, with the wind roaring in the tree tops. Yep, I’m chicken!
73
Brian G8ADD